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JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


PIEEEE LOTI 

Of the Academie Frangaise ^ 

AUTHOR OF “the BOOK OF PITY AND OF DEATH,” 

“into morocco,” etc. 


TRANSLATED BY 

E. P. EOBINS 



CASSELL PUBLISHLSrC COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue 


s| 


Copyright, 1893 , by 
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 


All rights reserved. 


THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


I 

MAECHma in the procession of the Fete- 
DieUj in company with three other children 
attired like himself, was a very small boy, 
dressed to represent an angel, videlicet, in a 
little cambric shirt and a pair of white 
dove’s wings fastened on his shoulders. 
That was in the month of June, beneath 
the warm, bright southern sun, in remote 
Provence, where it touches Italy. 

The other three angels were fair and 
trudged along with eyes downcast, mani- 
festly taking themselves and the situation 
in general very seriously. But our friend, 
little Jean, brown as a berry and with a 
tangle of curls surmounting his pretty face, 
the handsomest and strongest of them all. 


2 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

cast comical looks at the people kneeling 
along kis path, not a wMt impressed by 
tke solemnity of the occasion, and evidently 
bent on having a good time. He had an 
appearance of vigor and perfect health, 
with regular features, a complexion like 
the sunny side of a ripe peach, and eye- 
brows that resembled two narroAV ribbons 
of black velvet. The expression of his 
candid, laughing eyes was more infantile, 
more babyish, than accorded well with his 
age of six or seven years, and the orbs 
themselves, dilated wide between lashes 
of unusual length, were of a deep, limpid 
blue, surprising in that little Arab face. 

His relatives — a widowed mother, who 
still wore mourning but had long since laid 
aside the long crape veil, and a kind old 
grandfather in black frock coat and white 
cravat — followed the procession at a dis- 
tance, among the crowd, a happy smile 
upon their lips, proud to see their darling 
look so handsome and to hear his praises in 
the mouth of everyone. 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 3 

Not blessed witb superfluity of this 
world’s goods were they, this mother and 
grandfather, possessing nothing save a little 
house in town and a small place in the 
country where there were a few orange 
trees and a field or two of roses ; connected 
by ties of kinship, too, through all this 
part of France, with people more wealthy 
than themselves, landowners and “ per- 
fumers,” who were inclined a little to look 
down on them. The Bernys were a num- 
erous and important family in that part 
of the world, whose strain had been un- 
tainted by admixture of foreign blood at 
least since the days of the Saracens, and 
their Provengal type had subsisted in all 
its purity. For two generations they had 
made part of the bourgeoisie of Antibes. 
Some old sea-dogs among their ancestors 
had sailed away in quest of pelf and glory, 
even as far as He de Bourbon and the 
Indies, and thus it was that nomadic 
instincts, transmitted by heredity and 
inspiring fear and alarm in the bosoms of 


4 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


the mothers, sometimes manifested them- 
selves among the young men and boys. 

As slowly and religiously she followed 
the little brown angel with the white 
dove’s wings, the widowed mother was 
reflecting on many matters, and even as she 
gazed on him and her soul was filled with 
delight and pride, her joy w^as marred by a 
melancholy preoccupation. O, w^hy the 
impossibility of that sweet and childish 
dream — the dream that every mother fondly 
cherishes — of keeping him by her as she 
beheld him now, a little boy with limpid 
eyes and curly head ! O, why does the 
future swallow up the present thus remorse- 
lessly ! Soon there would be so many dif- 
ficulties to be faced and conquered for the 
sake of this wayward and charming little 
creature, who, notwithstanding his baby 
eyes, was already beginning to assume 
mannish ways, who had troublesome freaks 
and fancies now and then, and would run 
away from home to play and roam the 
fields till nightfall, no one knew where. 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOH 


5 


To give him an education equal to his 
cousins, so much richer than he, what was 
she to do, how was she to manage ? And 
if he should refuse to work after all their 
sacrifices, what would become of them ? 
By this time she had ceased to smile, and 
was heedless alike of the white-robed maid- 
ens in the procession, the cheerful sunlight 
and the fieeting present ; her mind was 
dwelling exclusively on this one thought, 
a little narrow, it may be, but so motherly 
and that had been her guiding star through 
life — how could she manage to make of her 
poor, penniless little Jean a man who should 
be at least the equal of the other boys of 
that proud Berny family. 


II 

A BOY of ten or thereabout, with a man- 
ner that indicated a superabundant fund 
of energy and daring, already approaching 
young manhood, but with the same babyish 
expression and laughing limpidity in the 
handsome eyes with their enframement of 
black velvet, was walking slowly up and 
down the beach at Antibes, accompanied 
by three or four other urchins of his own 
age, one of whom, four years ago, had also 
figured as an angel in the procession of the 
Fete-Dieu, 

Perceiving a felucca stranded on the 
fiats, motionless and with a heavy list to 
port, the little choppy blue waves of the 
Mediterranean eddying and swirling around 
her, they hurried off with the resolute and 
knowing air of old sailors to lend a helping 
hand, while the fishermen, baring their 
6 


JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 


1 


swarthy legs, leaped overboard to pull 
their vessel off. 

It was a beautiful Easter Sunday. Jean 
was wearing man’s attire that day for the 
first time, jacket and trousers, with a little 
brown felt hat set off by a velvet ribbon, 
which he wore very far back on his head, 
sailor fashion. Attired in the same pretty, 
brand new suit, he had attended high mass 
that morning with his mother; and now 
the time, longed for with such impatience, 
had come, when he could be off and amuse 
himself with his companions. 

At evening, as was always the case, he 
came in late to dinner, after a day spent in 
roaming about the old port and climbing 
over the ships. His new clothes were in a 
sorry plight, notwithstanding the entreaties 
and admonitions his mother had given him 
that morning, and the little brown felt was 
cocked all of one side over his tangled curls 
and perspiring forehead. He was scolded 
a little, but very gently, as was the case 
always. 


8 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


Because it was a fete day and they were 
to go out after dinner he did not change 
his fine new suit before sitting down at 
table. The fancy seizing him, he even 
asked permission to wear the pretty, broad- 
brimmed hat, than which life had nothing 
more dear to him. The old grandfather, 
who always took dinner with his daughter 
Sundays, was there, too, as ever wearing 
the black frock and white cravat that gave 
to his semi-poverty an aspect of respect- 
ability. And the twilight, the limpid, cre- 
puscular light of springtime, shed its soft, 
rosy splendor upon the homely board that 
old Miette, the maid of all work, had spread 
for the family for many a long year. 

For all his love of fun and sport, which 
was uppermost pretty constantly with him, 
Jean loved them both well, mamma and 
grandfather ; in his impulsive, fitful little 
heart, that was too apt to forget what it 
should have remembered, they had a safe, 
warm corner, although it was sometimes 
hard to find. And now, at that very 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 9 

moment, in spite of his inattention and 
absent-mindedness, in spite of the tantalizing 
desire he felt to be out under the open sky, 
a new picture of them was forming in his 
mind, overlying and obliterating the more 
ancient ones, a picture more lasting than 
those that had gone before, and that in the 
future would be cherished more fondly and 
regretted more keenly. So, too, were en- 
graved more deeply on the tablet of his mem- 
ory the unprepossessing features of poor, 
humble Miette, who had helped to rear him 
and rocked his cradle when he was a baby ; 
so, too, with every trivial detail about the 
house, so Provencal in appearance, arrange- 
ment and odors, where he first saw the 
light. There are certain moments in our 
life that seem to have in them nothing of 
special import, nothing more or less than 
the countless others of which we take no 
note, and which yet become to us as land- 
marks, milestones never to be forgotten amid 
the swift fiight of hurrying years. Thus 
was it with that dinner hour at Eastertide 


10 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


for that small creature, so mere a child, who 
doubtless had never until then known what 
it was to think with such intensity and 
unconscious profundity. And to that 
impression, which had suddenly stamped 
itself upon his mind in such vivid and 
unfading colors, of his mother’s loving, 
anxious eyes, of the old grandfather’s face, so 
full of gentle resignation, rising above the 
snow-white cravat, there came mingling 
with the others — for the always of human- 
ity, that is to say, for all his lifetime — a 
host of secondary elements : his assumption 
of man’s attire, presage of greater liberty 
and an adventurous life; the color of the 
new paper on the walls of the dining-room ; 
some other inexpensive embellishments 
about the premises of which he was very 
proud ; the delightful prospect of a week’s 
vacation that lay before him ; the im- 
pression of approaching summer, the 
charm of those early splendors of protracted 
twilight, of that period of the year when 
they were first permitted to dine in the 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 11 

expiring transparency of daylight, without 
the lamp; and, finally, the multitude of 
inexpressible small things that, taken to- 
gether, formed a tenderly melancholy back- 
ground for that happy evening. The gal- 
lery of pictures that was formed there, 
deep in his memory, and so closely linked 
together that they could not be torn one 
from another, might have been fitly styled 
instantaneous photographs of an Easter 
Sunday. 

And all the while she, the mother, was 
watching him with increasing anxiety, be- 
holding him so absent and preoccupied, his 
thoughts so far away from home and her ! 
For a long time she had been cherishing an 
idea, a fixed, fond plan, whereby she might 
keep this only son of hers in Provence and 
have him for a delight and prop to her 
declining years ; an uncle, the only one of 
the rich Bernys who had ever condescended 
to notice his poor, handsome little nephew, 
was one of the perfumers of the neighbor- 
hood, or, in other words, he owned up on 


12 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR. 

the mountain a factory where the heaps and 
heaps of roses and geraniums that were 
gathered in the fields about were made to 
surrender by distillation their sweet odors ; 
and he had promised to provide for Jean’s 
future, and ultimately make the business 
over to him, if Jean, as he grew to man- 
hood, showed himself obedient and indus- 
trious. 

But on that pleasant Easter evening her 
melancholy and despair grew darker and 
deeper as she saw with what fixed intensity 
he gazed from out the open window upon 
the port, crowded with white-winged ships 
and swift feluccas darting here and there, 
and beyond the broad stretch of deep blue 
sea. 


Ill 

Oisr a bright, stiflingly hot afternoon late 
in June, in a class-room into which the sun, 
his daily course now almost ended, was 
pouring floods of light, a tall, handsome 
young fellow, of manly proportions, close- 
buttoned in his tightly fitting collegian’s 
tunic, was indulging in a day-dream, all by 
himself, his eyes filled with idle speculation. 

The classes had been dismissed, the town 
boys had gone to their homes, the others 
were diverting themselves in a remote play- 
ground. He, Jean, who was one of the few 
boarders in this Provencal college of Mar- 
istes, was enjoying this evening a brief 
respite from his labors in recognition of his 
name having appeared that day in the Offi- 
cial Bulletin : Jean Berny, candidate for 
the Naval School. And he had come to 
13 


14 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

this class-room that he might be alone, and 
reflect on the future of adventure that he 
beheld before him. 

His mother, it is unnecessary to state, 
had abandoned all her cherished plans ; 
since it was his wish, she had consented 
that he should adopt that seafaring life 
which she held in such dread and horror, 
and, once the matter settled, that he might 
pass successfully, had condemned herself 
to a life of severe and unintermitting pri- 
vation. 

A candidate for the Borda ! And yet 
he had been an idler and a drone, had 
wasted his time and perpetrated every 
description of boyish prank from beginning 
to end of his schooldays, while there at 
home the mamma and grandfather, and old 
Miette, too, in her humble way, w^'ere pinch- 
ing themselves to pay his bills for board 
and instruction. 

But now that there was a chance of his 
passing, he had said to himself that he 
would turn to the best account he knew 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 15 

how the two months that were left to him 
before the dreaded final oral examination, 
but he would grant himself a holiday for 
this evening and the morrow, just to reflect 
on matters a bit. 

He had begun by setting down on the 
first page of his exercise books, opposite 
his name, the glorious and ever to be remem- 
bered day of the week, month and year. 
And now he was thinking of far distant 
lands, whose shores were washed by strange 
and unknown seas. 

About him on every side the repose of the 
dying day was descending on the old Marist 
college; the empty rooms, the deserted 
corridors were filled with the sonorous 
silence of the summer evening; streaming 
through the wide-open windows the golden 
light of the declining sun penetrated every- 
where, illuminating dark corners, casting a 
warm splendor on the bare walls, roughly 
smeared with yellow ochre, and in the blue 
sky above clouds of dusky swallows were 
wheeling, advancing, and receding, drunk 


16 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


witli light and motion, and at every turn 
in their swift flight hurling against the 
silent college their shrill, strident cry. 

And deep down in the recesses of Jean’s 
memory a picture was forming of this 
summer evening and all these attending 
circumstances — as formerly of the dinner 
at Eastertide — another landmark, another 
headland in the ocean of life, but this time 
with more of the mysterious and foreign 
in it, with more of vague, unexplained mel- 
ancholy in the environment. 

Until the hour when the flrst bats came 
flitting forth in silence from beneath the 
hot timbers of the old roof did he remain 
there, tranquil and solitary, dreamily re- 
flecting on the future and on the career 
that was so near as almost to be within his 
grasp. And the splendor of the atmos- 
phere spoke to him of yellow sands and 
glaring sunlight, of cities of the Orient, of 
strands that man’s foot had never pressed, 
and, vaguely, too, of love. 


IV 


It is two months later at Antibes, about 
the middle of vacation. 

The time was at hand when the list of 
appointments to the Naval School would 
be made public. An atmosphere of poig- 
nant expectation pervaded the little house, 
on which the hot Provengal sun beat fiercely, 
whither day after day, as soon as the Offi- 
cial was received, came the grandfather to 
say there was no news. Through some of 
the wealthy Bernys who had grudgingly 
consented to lend their infiuence, letters of 
recommendation to the examiners had been 
secured from some men of note — and Jean’s 
mother was hopeful. It was, in a measure, 
a question of life and death with him, how- 
ever, for he would soon be seventeen, and 
should he be rejected, admission to the 
17 


18 


JEANBERNT, SAILOR 


Borda would evermore be inexorably 
denied him. 

As for him, the lack of interest he dis- 
played was incomprehensible. Some new 
notion, which alarmed and distressed his 
relatives, seemed to have germinated in 
that comely head of his, so thoughtless and 
yet so stubborn, so difficult to guide aright, 
for such utter unconcern was not to be 
accounted for, even on the ground of his 
extreme boyishness. It really seemed as 
if a sailors life had ceased to have attrac- 
tions for him. But they both hung back 
and refrained from questioning him, fearing 
to know the worst. 

He, however, now a young man grown, 
boasting a silky mustache and wearing a 
handsome English suit in place of the dis- 
carded schoolboy’s tunic, was almost con- 
stantly away from home, and lingered, 
love-making among the pretty girls, until 
the night was far advanced. 

And yet it was the self-same, frank, limpid 
eyes, gray-blue in color, looking out from be- 


JEANBERNT, SAILOR 


19 


tween intensely black, curved lashes, the 
eyes of the little angel of the Fete-Bieu, that 
illuminated his face, now radiant with the 
pride of manhood. And no one looking in 
those eyes, so childishly irresponsible, but 
at the same time so tender and so kindly, 
could find it in his heart to chide him or 
say an ungentle word to him. 

And his eyes did not belie him ; he was 
as affectionate and tender-hearted as their 
expression denoted him to be, was this 
rattle-pated Jean. For his mother and 
grandfather, to whom he had been an al- 
most constant source of anxiety, his love 
amounted to adoration. If he was captious 
and fretful with them at times, as was 
often the case, the reason was that in his 
eyes they still personified authority, against 
which his untrained nature incessantly 
rebelled. The better side of his disposition 
he displayed to the poor and lowly, to old 
Miette now and then, to little beggar boys, 
to feeble old paupers, to suffering animals ; 
and the house was always pervaded by 


20 JEANBEBNt, SAILOR 

three or four ugly, half -starved cats, that 
it was comical to see him bring in tenderly 
in his arms, after having saved them from 
their appointed death by drowning. 

One day the old grandfather, trim and 
respectable as ever in his well-brushed 
black frock, which, in order that his grand- 
son might have the benefit of another tutor 
was doing its second year’s service, came in 
later than usual, with a step more feeble and 
tottering than was his w^ont. Miette, who 
had been watching at the kitchen window 
forhiscoming,alarmedtoseehim witha news- 
paper in his hand, hastily pulled to the shut- 
ters as if to retard the dreaded moment when 
the truth must be known, seated herself, 
her heart beating violently, and waited. 

He entered, and when he had climbed 
the stairs to the little first floor drawing- 
room, called in a voice that was strangely 
unlike his own : 

^^Henriette, my daughter, quick, come 
here !” 


JEANBERNT, SAILOR 


21 


She came hurrying to him, panting 
breathlessly. 

“ What is it ? He has been rejected, 
hasn’t he ? ” 

“ W ell, yes — yes, my daughter. At least 
we shall have to think so, for here is the 
Official^ and his name does not appear in it.” 

O my Lord, my God ! ” was all the poor 
mother said, wringing her hands, in a faint, 
broken-hearted voice. And they sat there, 
the old man and she, in silence, pressing 
closely to each other’s side, stricken dumb 
by the wreck of all their earthly hopes. 
There was nothing left for them to say ; 
during those days of waiting and suspense 
they had exhausted the subject in their 
anxious colloquies, had looked this irreme- 
diable disaster in the face and examined it 
in all its consequences. What would he 
do, that Jean to whom they had not found 
courage to speak their mind, what effort 
would he consent to make ? To maintain 
him at school on an equality with his com- 
panions, to preserve to the little house and 


22 


JEANBERNT, SAILOR 


to its inmates an outward show of respect- 
ability, they had been reduced to the neces- 
sity of becoming borrowers and had mort- 
gaged the country property, the orange 
trees and fields of roses that had been 
handed down from father to son for genera- 
tions. And now that the end for which 
they had sacrificed their all was no longer, 
and would never be, capable of attainment, 
they could not see their way before them ; 
no, in their lack of means to provide another 
career for their son, they could not see 
their way at all. Their life was shattered, 
their small world seemed to them to be 
drawing to an end. Forebodings of disas- 
ter, inevitable and irretrievable, fioated 
before their mental vision, and, without well 
knowing why, they looked upon their Jean 
as one for whom there was no longer hope 
in life. And as they continued to sit there 
in mournful silence, it seemed to them that 
over their poor home that they had loved 
so well, that they had sacrificed so much 
to save, there passed a chill wind, breath- 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


23 


ing menace of dispersion and piecemeal 
ruin. 

And now to them came he^ with the light 
step of the thoughtless idler, in his button- 
hole a red rose that a pretty girl who loved 
him had placed there. 

“ O Monsieur Jean ! ” said Miette, stand- 
ing in the corridor, come in, come in, quick. 
Go up and see your poor mother and the 
grandfather, who are above, awaiting 
you.” 

How ? What is the matter ? ” he said 
olf-handedly, assuming his mannish air of 
unconcern. The distress on Miette’s face 
had told him all. 

He entered the unpretentious little draw- 
ing-room, where, as the maid had said, they 
were awaiting him, and toward which, 
exchanging no word, they had heard him 
coming up the stair. He came forward 
with the embarrassed air and bearing of a 
schoolboy detected in some trivial pecca- 
dillo, with partly averted face, and in his 


24 


JEANBERNY, SAILOR 


soft, velvety eyes there was something, an 
imperceptible smile, approaching bravado. 

Of their deep distress he saw nothing. 
For his own part, he was neither surprised 
nor disappointed, for he had long since 
ceased to hope, knowing as he did, better 
than anyone else, how he had frittered away 
his time up to the very last minute, and at 
the oral examination had cut a sorry figure. 
There had been five or six boys of his stamp 
at the Marist college, who, looking forward 
to the possibility of a failure, had mutually 
pledged themselves to take service in the 
merchant marine. The blue shirfc had no 
terrors for those lads; on the contrary, it 
had an attraction and a charm for them, as 
is the case with many a man who follows 
the sea solely for the pleasure he derives from 
sporting its distinctive costume. And dur- 
ing the month of inactivity that the vacation 
afforded him he had had time to perfect his 
plans for the future, which had much com- 
mon sense to commend them, and to accus- 
tom himself in thought to his new and 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


25 


laborious life. He would commence at tbe 
foot of the ladder, as a common, plain 
sailor-boy, and work his way up ; in this 
way he would be obeying the bidding of 
his maritime instincts, and, it might be, 
would see more of the world and encounter 
more thrilling adventures than in the 
navy. 

Pooh ! ” he exclaimed, without looking 
at the sheet which his grandfather’s trem- 
bling hand held out to him ; “ what do I 
care for their old Borda^ since I shall be a 
sailor all the same ! ” 

A sailor all the same. A common sea- 
man, then, the career in all the world his 
mother most disliked and dreaded ! He 
announced his determination with the calm- 
ness of unalterable resolution — and therein 
lay the secret of his tranquil unconcern, 
that she had not until then succeeded in 
divining. Falling on them in the midst of 
their gloomy silence, this boyish utterance 
was the resume and explanation of the 
somber, mysterious things that had been 


26 


JEANBERNY, SAILOR 


hanging in the air, the forebodings of ruin, 
misery and death. 

He looked them in the face, now, a thing 
he had not dared to do when he first came 
in. He looked at them with an air that 
was firm and decided still, but was very 
gentle, and grew gentler and gentler yet, 
with an expression of melancholy on his 
face that became more and more strongly 
marked. A sudden light had flashed in on 
his unreflective, happy-go-lucky mind ; all 
the sacrifices that had been so carefully 
kept hid from him, aL the pinching and 
mute privation, he now divined for the 
first time ; his love for them was swollen 
by a sentiment that w^as new to him, one 
of profound and tender compassion ; and as 
he remarked the shiny spots that constant 
wear had left on his grandfather’s carefully 
preserved coat, he felt himself melted and 
subdued as by a supreme prayer. Had his 
mother but asked him then he would have 
renounced all his youthful dreams of adven- 
ture; would have consented to all they 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 27 

could have desired, embracing them the 
while, and- weeping hot tears. 

But she did not read him rightly ; hurt 
in her maternal pride, misjudging him and 
his intentions, wounded and grieved in 
every fiber of her being, she spoke to him 
in accents of severity, at that crucial mo- 
ment when his heart was overflowing with 
tender sympathy for her. Then he hard- 
ened himself in turn ; the eyes of the little 
angel of the Fete-DieUj which had reap- 
peared but now in all their soft limpidity, 
became set and dry, and he left the room, 
his determination .now fixed beyond recall, 
immutably. 

As he passed through the hall down- 
stairs, beholding old Miette weeping in an 
agony of apprehension: Cheer up ! Miette 
mine,” he cried, don’t grieve. This is not 
the end of the business, don’t you see. 
There are plenty of other ways to be a sailor.” 

^^How is that. Monsieur Jean?” she 
asked, lending an attentive and credulous 
ear, I thought it was all ended.” . 


28 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

Then he entered the neat kitchen and 
sat down to tell her what he had planned. 
Dissatisfied with himself at heart and op- 
pressed by a sensation of melancholy that, 
until then, he had been a stranger to, lack- 
ing courage to go abroad and unable to 
endure the thought of facing those in the 
room above, he lingered long at her side. 
^When I shall have served my time before 
the mast, you see,” he told her, “ I will ship 
with captains who make the long voyage ; 
in that way I shall more quickly get a ship 
of my own. I am just as well pleased, I 
assure you, that matters have turned out 

the way they have ” and seeing that 

she was looking at him and smiling 
through her tears, he took her in his arms 
and kissed her, lowly as she was, poor old 
Miette. 


V 

October was drawing to an end in a 
glory of tranquil sunshine. 

The light that fell day by day on the 
Berny residence was clear and bright as 
ever, the heavens above were immutably 
blue, but the little house was dark and ^ 
cheerless since the day that the great disap- 
pointment had come within its door. 

A rough sailor’s kit — shirts of coarse 
linen, trousers and: pea-jackets of stout, 
serviceable cloth, which the women spoke 
of in a whisper, with bated breath, and 
showed to no one — was being made ready, 
with Miette’s assistance, in the little dining- 
room whose windows looked out upon the 
sea. 

The other Bernys, the rich uncles and 
cousins, had been informed by J ean’s grand- 
39 


30 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


father, with an ill-feigned air of nonchalance, 
of the decision that had been arrived at : 

Yes, we are going to let him serve aboard a 
trading vessel for a while, so that he may 
finish his apprenticeship as soon as possi- 
ble, since his mind is bent on sailing in a 
deep-water ship and seeing something of 
the world. Perhaps our dear boy will 
change his mind when he has had some 
experience of the life ; in that case, we shall 
be only too happy to direct him toward 
another career. But, for the time being, his 
inclination in that direction seems to be so 
strong that his mother and I thought it our 
duty not to thwart it.” And then those 
other Bernys, more insolently patronizing 
than ever, and placing little confidence in 
the future of the officer who has to work 
for his living, wanted to know the name of 
the ship in which he was to sail. 

Oh, as for that, she was a very unassum- 
ing little craft, hailing from the port of 
Antibes — the most convenient arrangement 
they had been able to make to enable him 


JEAN BEENT, SAILOB 


31 


to come home to them once in a while — a 
small brig that was loading up for the 
islands of the Levant with terra cotta jars 
made at Vallauris. 

In addition to his other mental suffering 
the poor old man was cruelly afflicted in 
his pride. For some twenty years now 
his daughter Henriette, by reason of her 
slender fortune, had been unable to secure 
complete recognition from that Berny 
family of which she had become one by 
marriage. From the time she was made a 
widow and thrown on her own resources, 
he had been uncomplainingly enduring a 
constant martyrdom of concealed privation 
for her sake, to the end that she might pre- 
serve appearances, not discharge Miette, 
not sell her house, and, above all, pay Lor 
Jean’s education at the Marist College in 
Grasse. And now that grandson, that J ean 
whom he adored in spite of all and perhaps 
more tenderly than ever, as the end of his 
life of sacrifice was drawing near, was 
causing him this supreme humiliation, was 


32 jean bernt, sailor 

going to be a common seaman before tbe 
mast, a sailor-boy on board a trader,” as 
tbe son of the meanest laborer or fisherman 
of the port might have done. What availed 
it to keep up the vain struggle, the hand- 
to-mouth existence from day to day, what 
availed anything. — Now that he had ful- 
filled the duty that respect for observances 
imposed on him and had communicated to 
the various members of the Berny family 
the decision that had been reached, it 
appeared to him that his usefulness in life 
had departed and that he no longer had 
any object to live for; he would have 
wished to remain at home, in his own bare, 
cheerless apartment, where the furniture 
was dim and faded with age, and there lie 
down and await the end. 

But it was Sunday evening, the day 
traditionally devoted to dining with his 
daughter ; he roused up a bit at the thought, 
and said to himself that he would dress and 
make ready to go — the more that this Sun- 
day would bethelast before Jean’s departure. 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 33 

He felt old, broken-down and weary as 
lie had never felt before. And when, 
before going out upon the street where his 
acquaintance saluted him more cavalierly 
than in the past, he began from force of 
habit to brush the poor old black frock 
that had done him such long and faithful 
service, a fit of discouragement came over 
him, for that as for all the rest ; in the 
sentiment of his only grandson’s disgrace 
his appearance, to which he had always 
devoted such jealous care in the midst of 
want and privation, his appearance, to day, 
seemed to him a matter of little moment. 
And tears rose to his dim, lusterless eyes 
— those old man’s tears that are more 
bitter than others, and flow unwillingly 
from their exhausted spring. 

Jean, for his part, let the days go by in 
loitering aimlessly and building castles in 
the air, with a vague melancholy, now for 
the first time noticeable there, in his eyes 
that had at times a look of vacancy and in 


34 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

his gentler manner. He remained at home 
much more than he had been used to do, 
and the port ceased to have attractions 
now that he had the certain assurance of 
soon being one of those who go down to 
the sea in ships. He hung about the 
house, casting lingering looks on the old 
familiar spots and thinking. Or he would 
betake himself, alone and solitary, to the 
old ancestral country place and shut him- 
self in the untended garden, where chrysan- 
themums and autumnal asters overran the 
walks, and there spend hours communing 
with his thoughts, while lizards sported 
on the gray wall and golden oranges hung 
from the trees in the October sunlight. 
His boyhood was ending with the summer ; 
with the glory of that sun, already declin- 
ing to the south and presaging the approach 
of winter’s melancholy days, would pass 
away his happy, careless youth ; he felt this 
keenly, with an impressiou of terror and 
regret never experienced before. 

While thus awaiting the time of his de- 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


35 


parture his mind did not pursue a fixed, 
consecutive train of thought, but gave itself 
up more and more to vague fancies and 
dreams of distant lands. He read much, 
also, during the long idleness that v^as so 
rapidly drawing to an end, and his choice 
of books — or rather of disconnected pas- 
sages of books — that, disdainfully putting 
aside all others, he selected for the charm 
they exercised on his imagination, indi- 
cated, as did his long eyes and pure pro- 
file, diffused transmitted Oriental tenden- 
cies. He was a compound of irreclaimable 
boyishness, physical exuberance, rude sim- 
plicity — and unconscious, unfathomable 
poetry. In the course of his miscellaneous 
reading he had come across, with the im- 
pression that they were not new to him, 
some of those visionary rhapsodies on the 
dead Orient that have become classic 
splendors, and he read them over and over 
in the silence of the sunlit garden, thrilling, 
each time he did so, with the sentiment of 
mystery that they evoked. 


36 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


It was an evening of the long-gone ages. The 
golden domes of Benares, at news of the death of 
the Star Sourya, phoenix of the world, wept 
tears of precious stones 

Words had a strange faculty of soothing 
and charming him. Simple allocutions 
like “ once upon a time ” or “ it came to pass 
that in the days of — ” that constitute such 
an important portion of the story-teller’s 
mental equipment, would produce in him a 
melancholy intoxication, like the faint per- 
fume of a sarcophagus. 

Egypt, Egypt ! the dung of birds defiles the 
shoulders of thy great unchanging gods, and the 
wind of the desert bears on its wings the ashes of 
thy dead 

And so, in that patrimonial domain, under 
the oranges that the fading sunlight touched 
with gold, among the chrysanthemums and 
purple asters and all the rank, uncared-for 
growths that chill autumn had breathed 
on wdth its withering breath, he thought of 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


37 


those seaports of the Levantine islands on 
which he was soon to set his eyes, and of 
Egypt and its deserts of yellow sand, and 
of millennial India. 


VI 

Their last Sunday evening dinner was 
eaten in silence ; it consisted of tlie same 
traditional dishes, served, according to im- 
memorial usage, by old Miette, who said 
not a word, for her heart, too, was heavy, 
and tears were ready to fall. 

All througb the repast Jean was beset 
by the haunting memory of a certain Easter 
dinner that had formed a sort of epoch in 
his boyhood’s life, and, when looked back 
on afterward across the intervening years, 
appeared to him surrounded by a mysteri- 
ous aureole of glory. There were the little 
brown felt hat and the newly assumed 
man’s attire ; the softly transparent light 
and all the signs of early spring, seen 
through the open window ; from all things 
there exhaled an impression of freshness, 
38 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


39 


of newness, of the cool, rosy dawn of open- 
ing life. Now, on the other hand, there 
was an undefined presentiment, inexpres- 
sibly sad, of swiftly approaching end and 
darkness coming down, joined to the phys- 
ical sensation of winter caused by the 
increasing cold and the earlier shutting in 
of night. 

When he had finished his dessert of 
grapes, and rose to go for his customary 
evening walk about the town, spiritlessly, 
however, and as if against his will, his 
grandfather said to him: ^^Kemain, my 
child, if you please; we have something 
we wish to say to you.” 

A darkling look rose swiftly to his face ; 
he remained standing, with head lowered, 
ready with his defense, fearing there was to 
be an attempt to make him renounce the 
sailor’s calling, a final attack of argument 
and entreaty — with a design, perhaps, to 
induce him to enter the service of his uncle, 
the perfumer. 

But the grandfather went on in a slow. 


40 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOB 

sad voice of resignation, speaking of things 
he had not thought to hear, and that fell, 
one by one, heavy as drops of lead, upon 
his heart : 

My child, you are approaching man’s 
estate, and I have thought it fitting that I 
should render my account, in order that 
you may know that from this time you 
have no one to depend on but yourself. 

^^My child — your mother and I have 
nothing, almost nothiog left. 

“We thought it our duty to keep you 
at college with the Marists, and to that 
end borrowed considerable sums of 
money — which are unfortunately secured 
by a mortgage on our old country place of 
Carigou. As long as I live and draw my 
pension, the amount of which is known to 
you, we shall be able, perhaps — thanks to 
the untiring economy of your mother and 
this good girl — we shall be able, perhaps, 
to keep our dear house — to which you are 
as deeply attached as w^e. But after that, 
what then ? ” His voice, which broke con- 


JEAN BERNT, BAILOR 41 

tinually, had in it the feeble quaver of 
great age, which Jean had never remarked 
before and which it gave him inexpressi- 
ble pain to hear. And when he had con- 
cluded his final sentence : “ God grant, my 
son, God in his mercy grant that I may 
live to see the day when you shall be able 
to earn your living — and your mother’s. 
For the thought of seeing her compelled 
to work hurts me, you see, hurts me horri- 
bly ” when he had concluded, convulsive 

movements agitated his shoulders beneath 
the thin-worn cloth of his poor shabby 
Sunday coat, and his eyes, that had beheld 
the light for eighty years, twitched with 
distress in a way that was most pitiful. 

He had already suspected something of 
the poor old grandfather’s sacrifices and 
self-humiliation, had divined the increasing 
penury at home, where nevertheless such 
decent order was maintained. But that, 
no. It was too much ; it exceeded the 
limits of all he had ever considered possi- 
ble ; to be destitute of everything, the old 


42 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

place and the town house sold to strangers 
— and his mother working to gain her 
daily bread ! 

Gradually, while his aged relative con- 
tinued to talk on in his feeble, trembling 
voice, these bitter truths impressed them- 
selves upon his mind, so often empty and 
thoughtless, and fixed themselves there 
indelibly as if seared on it with a red-hot 
iron. Then he threw himself upon their 
bosoms, weeping hot tears, as children 
weep, possessed by an overmastering yearn- 
ing to embrace and console those dear 
ones — and also to ask them for protection, 
for their protection and their counsel in 
the presence of disaster. 

But his mother shed no tear ; she held 
him clasped to her bosom, forgetful of all 
beside for the time being, and desiring 
nothing save that she might be allowed to 
hold him thus. The misapprehension, the 
icy barrier that for the last two months 
had kept than asunder, had ceased to 
exist, and all the rest was as nothing in 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


43 


comparison with this unspeakable delight 
of finding her boy once more, and forgiv- 
ing, and knowing she still had his love. 

Besides, more plebeian than her father, 
doubtless by reason of tendencies inherited 
from some forgotten progenitor who lived 
in times long-past, she felt herself now the 
braver, the calmer and more resolute of 
the two, when brought face to face with 
the probability of ruin ; if it became nec- 
essary to work, why, then she would work ; 
she would leave the country, that was all 
there was about it, and follow her Jean 
wherever his duty might call him ; sailor 
or officer, it was all the same ; he would 
still be her Jean, her stay, her prop, her 
life and only joy, and when she held him 
pressed to her bosom the world had noth- 
ing to offer her that she desired. 


VII 


After the conversation of that evening 
a more cheerful feeling and somewhat of 
hope prevailed in the little house. After 
all, regard being had to the impossibility 
of persuading him to take up other studies, 
his plan for the future was about as good 
as any that could be devised, and the years 
before the mast would slip away and 
quickly be forgotten. 

His calculation was : In two years I shall 
be an able seaman, and three years after 
that I can apply for a certificate empower- 
ing me to command a merchantman; in 
five years I shall be earning a good living 
and in a position to assist mother and 
grandfather; we shall all be happy once 
more and the dark days will be forgotten. 
He formed many good resolutions for his 
future guidance, he would work hard and 
44 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


45 


be very prudent, and his thoughtless 
gayety came back to him, his boyishness 
and jovial laugh. 

He never left the house, however, except 
in their company. On those evenings, the 
last they were to be together, the three of 
them would go out to take the air, decently 
dressed in their best attire, as if by their 
appearance to assert their dignity in the 
eyes of those whom they encountered ; 
the old grandfather, carrying himself very 
erect, neat as a pin with his carefully 
brushed coat and immaculate neck cloth, 
Jean in his handsome English suit that he 
was soon to wear no more, faultlessly 
gloved and having his mother on his arm, 
the picture of a methodical, staid young 
man. 


VIII 

Amottg the mists and fogs of early 
November the little brig was bounding 
over the billows, careening before the 
freshening breeze. A low, monotonous, 
humming sound accompanied her — like the 
rustling of silk, or very soft tissue paper 
crumpled in the hand — less a sound than a 
manifestation of silence peculiar to the 
time and place. 

Antibes was vanishing in the distance, 
showing like a small speck of yellow that 
momentarily grew less and less at the base 
of the overhanging snow-clad Alps, which, 
on the other hand, seemed to tower larger 
and more confusedly against the back- 
ground of leaden sky. 

Jean, a sailor two hours old, in heavy 
boots and thick pea-jacket, was doing his 
46 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


47 


best to maintain bis equilibrium on the 
brig’s sloping deck, bis eyes big with 
wonder at tbe novelty of it all. It was 
subject of uneasiness to bim to be thus soli- 
tary among strangers, on those few frail 
planks that seemed endowed with life and 
were flying from tbe world of bis acquaint- 
ance; be was awed by tbe melancholy 
waste of immensity that surrounded bim 
on every band, and became with each suc- 
ceeding moment more grand and somber. 

Tbe others of tbe crew were there as 
well, watching like him, but with emotions 
of a different and lower order, tbe receding 
land, where their stay bad been longer 
than usual and tbe restraints and enforced 
sobriety of sea life bad been relaxed. 
These, Jean’s new companions, were six in 
number: a Maltese, black as an Arab, 
ragged, exposing bis bare chest to tbe 
keen evening breeze; a brace of sturdy 
rascals from Provence ; a roaming vagabond 
of Bordeaux ; and a deserter from tbe navy, 
who was careful bow be showed bis face 


48 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

in Frencli seaports. All, together with 
their sea togs, had assumed the look of 
endurance and impassiveness that is char- 
acteristic of the sailor. 

While they were hanging about the deck 
inactive the captain made his appearance 
aft, a stern, grave man of colossal pro- 
portions, whose hair was beginning to be 
tinged with gray, with dull, lifeless eyes 
void of all speculation. He gave a com- 
mand in a hoarse voice, couched in lan- 
guage that was so much Greek to Jean, 
and as the young man, novice-like, not 
knowing what to do, smiled and seemed to 
take the matter as a joke, he soon heard 
himself recalled to duty in stern, harsh 
language. He looked at his commander 
and the smile disappeared from his face ; 
he did not see how there could be such a 
difference as existed between this man and 
the one who, only a short while before, 
had received him at Antibes with such a 
politely deferential tone, when he came on 
board, accompanied by his handsomely 


JEAN BERET, SAILOR 


49 


dressed mother and stately old grand- 
father. 

A feeling of disconragement rose to our 
sailor-boy’s mind at the reflection that he 
was the inferior, or at best only the equal, 
of those beings with whom his lot was 
cast, and that henceforth he was to render 
blind obedience to the mandates of his 
captain. He was oppressed by a horrible 
sensation of abasement ; at a single blow, 
there in the gathering night, he felt the 
galling yoke of servitude riveted about 
his neck. 


IX 


Days succeeded, each like the other, 
toilsome and joyless, days of which no 
one could tell the name, forming weeks 
and months that no one took the pains to 
count : a time that seemed long in the 
present, but in the retrospect appeared 
very brief. 

For days they would sail over solitary 
seas, then would put in at some unfre- 
quented port in Corsica or Italy. The jars 
of Vallauris had been shij)ped merely with 
a view to blinding the authorities and were 
landed at Leghorn ; there were nocturnal 
departures and mysterious maneuvers as 
to which no one dared to ask questions. 
They were as clay in the hands of the 
potter, and yielded mute obedience to the 
man who controlled their destinies. 

In these furtive stoppages, which were 
50 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


51 


for the most part made off lonely beaches, 
where there were no wharves or other facili- 
ties for landing, the crew were compelled 
to do the work of common laborers ; bare- 
footed through the briny water, over the 
deep sand and jagged rocks, they had to 
carry heavy burdens, sacks and bales of 
which the contents were unknown to them. 
But Jean, because there was no one to see 
him in those wild retreats, accomplished his 
task with no sense of humiliation ; he felt, 
moreover, that this occupation, like all 
rough and dangerous callings that carry 
little profit with them, had a certain aspect 
of nobility and grandeur. And then, too, 
this active physical exercise which fatigues 
and fortifies the body while quieting the 
mind suited him. At evening only, when 
night was closing in, out on the broad ocean 
or in some sequestered bay, did memories 
of the past return to sadden him. 

Through all sorts of weather the stout 
little smuggler craft, old already and bear- 
ing many a scar, tore onward in spite of all ; 


52 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


thrashing through the boisterous, ugly seas, 
scourged by the icy mistral that stung the 
men’s faces like a needle. She is my only 
dependence,” the captain once said in his 
1‘aucous voice, ^^and I have five children 
at home. She has got to go or else go 
under ! ” It was for Jean’s benefit that this 
explanatory statement — the only one that 
was ever heard to issue from his mouth — 
was made ; he was beginning to manifest a 
sort of interest and friendly inclination for 
his new hand, of which the latter was proud. 

Owing to the uncertainty that attended 
their movements, it was only at remote 
intervals that he received letters from 
Antibes ; the same envelope always en- 
closed the handwriting of the two beings 
dearest to him on earth — his mother’s and 
that of the old grandsire, constantly more 
tremulous in his declining years. He had 
a box in which he kept them, as if they 
had been holy relics, in the securest corner 
of his damp little locker. They constituted 
his sole treasure on the vessel, where he 


JEAN BEHNY, sailor 53 

lived in the same squalor and privation as 
the meanest of the crew. 

Sometimes it chanced that a day of re- 
pose was granted them ; they had to kill 
time as best they could in some dreary, 
lifeless village or unfrequented bay. On 
such occasions Jean, before going ashore, 
would always put on his best clothes, 
which no longer fitted him, being too small 
for his increasing proportions, and had lost 
their original freshness of color owing to. 
being laid away so long in the dampness. 
He would have no one with him in his 
strolls, and for a few brief hours would 
once more be the boy of other days, loi- 
tering in the old garden at Carigou, dream- 
ing long dreams, and giving his fancy leave 
to roam unchecked. He would walk 
straight ahead without definite aim or ob- 
ject, meditatively observing strange things 
and places in his dreamy way, exchanging 
a look or smile with the girls he met, 
blondes or brunettes, as might be, now and 
then inaugurating a passing flirtation, 


54 


JEANBBRNT, SAILOR 


which, in those localities, came to nothing, 
but served to trouble his peace of mind. 
He preferred the toils and perils of the 
deep to those days of idleness and reflec- 
tion, which only brought his future too 
distinctly before his eyes. Distractions of 
this kind were very brief, however, and very 
rare ; and then they were so quickly for- 
gotten and dismissed, barely leaving behind 
them in his memory a portrait of the young 
girl, which, for a few evenings, would re- 
turn just as slumber was descending. 

But for these infrequent respites his 
home was on the sea, the sea always and 
in spite of all, be the weather what it 
might, buffeting the white-fringed waves, 
struggling against the icy mistral. 


X 

Thus passed the winter. 

A period of delight, almost of enchant- 
ment, was the visit they paid in May to the 
Isle of Ehodes. 

Just at the close of the wintry season, 
which was longer and more severe that 
year than usual, their poor little craft, that 
seemed no less than her crew to be in need 
of refreshment and repose, put into the 
port of Khandj iotas. The change in lati- 
tude, their descent toward the sunny South, 
which is in itself a sovereign distraction to 
men’s minds, was coincident with the sud- 
den coming of the spring, the springtime 
of the Orient. Jean could not remain un- 
affected by the magic of that Levant for 
which he had so longed, of which he had 
dreamed so fondly in his distant home, 
beneath the orange trees of the old garden 
55 


56 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

at Antibes, and wbich now presented itself 
to liis eyes in all its tranquil and desolate 
splendor. 

Their repairs would necessitate a stay at 
the island of a month; a sufficient time 
almost to become acclimated — and also to 
fall in love. 

The first day was devoted to airing the 
hold and emptying the moldy lockers of 
their contents; articles of apparel were 
hung to dry in the rigging, exposed to the 
warm breeze, and it seemed as if the little 
vessel itself shared the general joy at being 
there, and was glad to have a chance to 
rest and bask in the bright sunshine. 

Oh, the exquisite charm of that first 
evening, so limpidly tranquil, redolent 
of strange odors! Jean’s duties did not 
permit him to leave the vessel, but no 
sooner was his day’s work ended than he 
leaped ashore and seated himself, almost 
in a recumbent posture, on the ruinous 
quay, that was soon to become such ^a 
familiar object to him. In the attire of the 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


57 


humble calling he had adopted, he real- 
ized, with a voluptuous pleasure, tinged 
with unutterable melancholy, the fruition 
of his dream of childhood ; he contemplated 
the sky ablaze with golden light, and the 
city whose dead slumberousness was veiled 
in an atmosphere of gold ; the Orient was 
revealed to him, more Oriental and more 
alien than he had ever dreamed of, in the 
ensemble of things, and in their thousand 
details — and, more than in all besides, in 
the great forbidding walls that formed an 
impenetrable barrier to the human life and 
activity within. 

And while he was reclining there alone 
a young girl appeared — she was a Greek or 
Syrian, therefore unveiled — who was to 
him the embodiment of all that Orient. 
She was very young, with heavy, intensely 
black eyes, and her henna-stained hair was 
of an unnatural, fiery red. She advanced 
with a hesitating step, then, perceiving the 
reclining sailor, crossed over toward the 
vessel and walked along the row of flag- 


58 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


stones that formed the coping of the qnay 
to obtain a nearer view. Her long eyes, 
black as blackest night and half -closed 
between their fringe of dark lashes, half- 
concealed by the red locks that straggled 
from beneath her spangled head-dress, shot 
inquisitive glances at Jean’s blue, wide-open 
eyes and black hair. She smiled and went 
her way, slowly as she had come, with an 
undulating motion of the hips that was in 
harmony with her supple form. 


XI 

She came every evening now at the 
beautiful golden twilight hour, and all the 
long day J ean thought of nothing but her 
coming. His day’s work done, quick, he 
plunged into the clear, cold water, dressed, 
adjusted his woolen heret becomingly over 
his close-cropped hair, and then, with a 
lover’s eagerness, jumped from the deck 
to the stone quay, there to smoke his Turk- 
ish cigarette and wait for her arrival ; and 
suddenly she would appear alcove him in 
the distance, at the end of a steep path, 
where the old frowning walls formed an 
angle. She would come to him, making 
her way downward from the old quarter of 
the town, casting anxious looks behind her 
as if in fear of being followed; stepping 
59 


60 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOM 


leisurely, she would draw near, bold in her 
innocence, ignorant of the danger that lies 
in loving. 

Jean would not stir, but wait for her to 
come to him. With a smile on her lips she 
would stop, give him a flower, a cluster of 
orange blossoms, or the common rose of the 
East that is so deliciously fragrant ; some- 
times she would address him a few words 
in her mongrel French : how long would 
he remain at Khandjiotas ? Where would 
he go next ? and then would pass on with 
a saucy laugh upon her face, negativing 
with vehement gestures of indignation or 
entreaty any attempt of his to follow 
her. 

He was never his own master until night, 
and as the town was Turkish, it was a 
matter of course that as soon as it became 
dark the gates were shut tight and fast. 
What could he do under those circum- 
stances ? 

Not only did she embody for him the 
charm of the country that so deliciously 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOE 


61 


disturbs tbe senses, but it even seemed 
as if tliose fleeting interviews and brief 
smiles were symbolical of J ean’s future life 
of unrealized aspirations and ephemeral 


XII 


Two weeks later they were making 
appointments to meet each other in a retired 
spot, half an hour after her appearance on 
the quay, when it was almost night. She 
allowed him to steal a kiss and would 
return it, but nothing more, and would run 
from him and seek shelter behind the great 
gray walls, threatening to return no more. 
And he, knowing it to be impossible to 
find her should she choose to hide, and 
fearing to lose her, would let her go. If 
you were going to stay here,” said she, or 
if you even expected to return, why, 

then ” But he could give her no 

assurance that he would return ; he was as 
ignorant as she of what the morrow had in 
store for him ; poor tyro on board a smug- 
gling craft, penniless, unable to call his soul 
his own, what plans could he make for the 
62 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


63 


future ? He was entirely at tlie mercy of 
the dark and mysterious man who was in 
command, and could say or promise nothing. 
That being the case he had perforce to 
remain satisfied with whatever favors his 
red-haired girl chose to grant him. 


XIII 

June came in with all its dazzling 
splendor, and the day of departure from 
the island was close at hand. Three, per- 
haps four, more of their stolen meetings, 
then all would be ended between them, 
doubtless forever. While reflecting on 
their parting and telling himself that the 
joy of conquest would remain forever 
incomplete, he felt within him that unfath- 
omable sensation of sadness that is con- 
nected in some inscrutable manner with 
things purely physical. And the Orient, of 
which that girl stood as the personification 
to his imagination, cast its immense poetic 
glamour on his fleshly regrets. 

But there came a letter from Antibes, 
silencing his regrets and changing every- 
thing. 


64 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


65 


The handwriting was his mother’s, hers 
alone. The dear old grandfather was very 
ill, she said. And from her manner of ex- 
pressing herself, as if to prepare him for the 
worst, he saw that the case was very seri- 
ous — a very different matter and more irre- 
mediable, doubtless, than the departure from 
Khodes. Then, as the memory of the poor 
old man, in his white neckcloth and black 
frock coat, rose to his mind, his heart grew 
very heavy ; more poignantly than ever he 
reproached himself with all the suffering he 
had caused him, the bitter disappointment 
that he had inflicted on him at the time he 
went away. And he thought with affright 
of the long distance that lay between them, 
of the time it would take him to return by 
sail, of the intentions of the close-mouthed 
captain, who would likely wish to break 
the voyage at intervening ports. It filled 
him with anguish and despair to be so 
utterly insignificant and helpless, to be 
without money to make his way home by, 
the swift mail route, to be powerless to 


66 JEANBEBNY, SAILOB 

hasten his return to him who perhaps was 
doomed to die. 

And that Orient, that had so charmed him, 
now suddenly appeared to him as a deathly 
sarcophagus of gold, in which he was impri- 
soned and of which he could not raise the lid. 
She was indifferent to him now, he almost 
hated her, the handsome girl who came 
down to him at eventide from the old 
walled city, and the kisses that he had 
not the courage to withhold were joy- 
less, bitter to the taste, and troubled by 
remorse. 

Until then the possibility that he might 
sometime lose his grandfather had never 
occurred to him, as is commonly the case 
with children who have never seen Death 
strike down without warning those near 
and dear to them ; seeing him always active 
and erect, always the same, and having all 
his life known him as he was then, Jean 
had not reflected that he was a very old 
man. His existence appeared to him as 
something stable and immovable, which he 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


67 


considered in mncli the same light that he 
did their house at Antibes, as a nest that 
was wholly his and could never be taken 
from him. 


XIV 

He arrived at Antibes in the subsequent 
month of July, having received no further 
advices in the intervening time. The taci- 
turn captain, ^vho was well disposed toward 
him, allowed him to go ashore immediately, 
without detaining him to assist in the labors 
necessitated by their arrival in port. And 
in the same suit that he had Avorn Avhen he 
Avent away, neatly brushed, but yelloAV noAV 
Avith age and much too small for him, he 
made his way through the city of his birth 
with a humility that was ucav to him, turn- 
ing to look at no one, unmindful of his 
faded garments and appearance nearly indi- 
cative of poverty. 

Antibes lay silent in the fierce, blinding 
sunshine. Quick, quick, Jean hastened to 
68 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOB 


69 


the house with all the speed he was capable 
of, feeling his legs giving way beneath him 
in his impatient anxiety, trembling as he 
had never trembled before on coming home. 

The door of the house was ajar, and just 
within it was the screen of muslin that in 
hot countries is universally used to keep 
out the flies. Miette, standing there in the 
cool, dark corridor, said to him : Ah, 
Monsieur Jean ! ” in a tone that chilled his 
blood, that suddenly brought to his memory 
the tone in which she had addressed him 
on the day when he failed in his examina- 
tion for the Naval School. 

Grandfather ? ” he asked in a low, be- 
seeching voice, as if he had lost ten years 
of his life — were a child almost. Where 
is grandfather ? ” 

The groan that answered his question 
told him all. His mother had heard him 
and came down from the room above ; they 
met on the stairs, and for a long time 
remained locked in each other’s arms, and 
she wept in silence, saying nothing, because 


VO JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

she saw that he had encountered Miette 
and knew all. 

With a buzzing in his head as of one 
who has sustained a great shock, he ascended 
with his mother to their little first floor 
drawing-room. A shabby-looking man was 
there, dressed in a shiny black frock coat, 
and on the table were displayed some silver 
forks and spoons, arranged in pairs. 

“Very Avell, then; take them at your 
price, monsieur,” said the mother, impatient, 
now her boy was there, to conclude the 
business she had begun. 

Then, while the two stood looking on in 
silence with unutterable regret depicted on 
their faces, the man placed a roll of bank- 
notes on the table and pocketed the forks 
and spoons, their family silver, marked 
with the grandsire’s monogram, that had 
done service at their dinners in the old 
bygone days. 

And as soon as he had left the room she 
cauglit her son by the hands : 

“ Yes, my poor child, I had to sell those 


. JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 11 

things, and all beside will have to go — 
all, all — the house and garden, everything, 
all that we possess ! His pension helped 
me to live— but now that he is gone — I 
can no more ! ” She spoke a little discon- 
nectedly, like one whose wits were wander- 
ing, her mind apparently not fixed on the 
terrible things she was saying, which 
nevertheless had caused her long hours of 
agonized despair — for she was distracted 
by Jean’s presence, by the joy of having 
him at her side, of contemplating him, 
admiring him, so handsome, so tall and 
strong. 

He cast himself into his mother’s arms 
and rested his cheek upon her shoulder, as 
if to seek comfort there and protection 
against the calamity that threatened to 
overwhelm and crush them. 


XV 


The three succeeding months were a 
period of deepest misery and distress to 
them, pervaded by a horrible sensation of 
suspense; one of those periods during 
which one can apply himself to nothing, 
has courage to undertake nothing — what 
availed it even to keep in order the poor 
dear house that was soon to be taken from 
them 

Lawyers and men of business were com- 
ing and going constantly. She had tried^ 
reluctantly and with a sense of humilia- 
tion, to enlist the sympathies of the other 
Bernys and prevail on them to help her a 
little and save her the necessity of parting 
with the home of her fathers. But the 
rich cousins declared it would be no less 
than madness, 'that it would only be bring- 
ing more complete ruin down upon her 
73 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 73 

head, that it would be best to sell, put her 
affairs iu shape, and get the matter ended. 
And she sold. 

When the irrevocable step was decided 
on the days seemed to fly by with greater 
swiftness, as in those evil dreams where 
time has no duration. 

And the. evening of the day that wit- 
nessed the signing of the deed, when they 
were seated together before the family 
board, the dinner, served as ever by old 
Miette, was to them as a funeral repast, 
their evening as one devoted to watching 
by the bedside of a corpse. 

Her plans were fully decided on : since 
Jean, whose eighteenth year was now at 
hand, must seek employment in his voca- 
tion, and as she herself must toil, must 
lead the life of a workingwoman, then the 
further from Antibes they were the better 
it would be; they would put the whole 
width of France between them and their 
old home ; she would go and settle with 
him in some one of the northern seaport 


74 


JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 


towns. Toulon was too near; she had 
acquaintances there, and then, too, Jean 
Avould have to spend at least a year at 
Brest, on board the naval training ship. 
At Brest, therefore, they would go and 
live, where their poverty would escape 
invidious comment. 

It was in October that the new owner 
gave them a week to remove their belong- 
ings from the house and prepare for their 
departure. As soon as they were gone 
workmen were to come in and tear up 
everything, replacing old with new ; noth- 
ing of all that the departing exiles had 
loved so well was fine enough for these 
fastidious* successors. So they applied 
themselves to selecting those poor things 
that they were most attached to ; but when 
it came to choosing, behold ! they were 
attached to everything ; no object was so 
valueless that they did not feel a pang at 
leaving it behind. And still they must be 
content to carry away so little ! 

Jean helped his mother, relieving her of 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


75 


the more laborious work and making pack- 
ing cases for the goods that were to be 
forwarded by the freight train. Each morn- 
ing he would awake in the little chamber 
of his boyhood and say to himself in bit- 
terness of spirit : “Yet another day nearer 
to that when I shall look on this for the 
last time ! ” And the house was being 
gradually emptied of its contents — the 
house that they no longer took pains 
to sweep and set in order, that was littered 
with the straw of the packing cases. The 
wonted aspect of the place was destroyed 
beyond the possibility of recognition. 

He packed away with loving care a 
thousand small objects that reminded him 
of his boyish days ; in particular, the copy- 
books that he had used at college, and in 
which he had jotted down his dreams of 
travel and adventure; they would be of 
use to him, too, later on, when he came to 
study up for his examination as master of 
a vessel. 

The only time each day he left the 


76 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


house was when he went to stroll for a 
little about the old place of Carigou, the 
key of which had been left in their keej)- 
ing, in the well-loved garden, now over- 
grown with weeds, that was assuming the 
air of a neglected graveyard. It was the 
same season of the year, the tranquil days 
were luminous with the same mellow sun- 
light, as when he visited the spot the pre- 
ceding autumn, alone, as he was to day, to 
indulge in reveries, no less sad than those 
of the present moment, of departure for 
the isles of the Levant. And he plucked 
the leaves of certain shrubs, the flowers of 
certain rose trees, that he might press them 
and carry them with liim in memory of the 
spot he loved so well. 


XVI 

“ Jean ! ” Mme. Berny called to her son 
in a sad regretful voice, interrupting her 
occupation of emptying a closet of its con- 
tents ; Jean, come here ! Do you remem- 
ber this ? ” and she held up before his eyes 
a little shirt of line cambric. 

He did not remember at first, it was so 
remote; but suddenly, oh, yes! the gar- 
ment he had worn at the Fete-Dieu! 

She had felt a desire to take one last 
look at it in his presence before putting it 
aside with the things that were to be 
destroyed or sold, but Jean insisted they 
should take it with them, and it was 
deposited, carefully wrapped and folded, 
in one of the trunks that were to accom- 
pany them to their land of exile. 

And this ? ” said she, displaying a little 
77 


78 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


brown hat, with long velvet ribbons 
depending from it. 

Then mournful memories of the past 
came streaming back upon his mind, and he 
recalled a certain Easter Sunday and the 
dinner he partook of on that bright day of 
spring, seated beside the old grandfather, 
now dead and gone ; and from his heart of 
hearts there rose a feeling of infinite melan- 
choly, a melancholy more inexplicable and 
cheerless in its mysterious essence than 
any that this leave-taking had caused him 
yet. 

Oh, no ; he could not endure the thought 
of parting with that little hat ; it was de- 
cided that it should make the journey to 
Brest in company with the little cambric 
shirt which occupied so small a space. 

The grandsire’s frock coat, his silver- 
headed cane, and various other things that 
had been his, were also to go. For people 
as poor as they, it must be admitted that 
they encumbered themselves with a great 
deal of useless luggage. 


XVII 


The last day ! And a day so bright and 
clear, so joyful in its sunny splendor, as if 
to inspire in them a keener regret for what 
they were about to leave behind, an incom- 
parable day in early Xovember. 

They were to start that evening at a late 
hour and travel by a night train. 

Jean had a multitude of things to attend 
to yet, and his packing was incomplete ; he 
made haste to finish his work, that he might 
have an hour before the sun went down to 
revisit his garden of Carigou, and indulge 
in reverie there. 

It was a moderately long walk from the 
city to the garden. When he unlocked 
the gate and entered there, night was close 
at hand : the horizontal rays of the dying 
luminary, red as the light of a great 
conflagration, were striking through the 


80 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR, 


branches and gilding the trunks of the old 
impassive trees. The melancholy of each 
of the endings that were so close at 
hand impressed itself on him and sank 
into his soul ; the ending day, the ending 
autumn, and that other ending, more poign- 
ant than all, their final departure from 
their home. 

Attachment to places, to trees, to walls, 
is with some of us, particularly in early 
youth, extremely powerful ; it may be that 
in imagining we experience feelings of love 
and regret for those inanimate things, we 
are only lamenting the vanishment of that 
which existed within our own being, and 
which shone in them by a reflected light. 
It seemed to Jean that that sale to strangers, 
that taking from him of objects that were 
his, could never despoil him of his right of 
possession to those things, which he looked 
on as being endowed almost with faculties 
of reason and reflection ; they would always 
be his property, not the property of those 
who had bought them. And who can tell 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


81 


if, before the commencement of bis ter- 
restrial existence, others, strangers, had not 
left a portion of their spiritual being in 
those same places, and experienced illusions 
like his own 

The light that had been casting rings 
and bands of gold on the venerable tree 
trunks suddenly faded and went out, and 
the silence of the garden seemed to become 
deeper and more intense ; the sun had set, 
and with the approach of night a chill 
breeze arose. 

It was time to return. J ean cast a look 
about him on the grass-grown walks, as if 
to say farewell to them, and turned to go. 
Very slowly, with many a backward, 
lingering look, he closed and locked the 
antique postern with an impression of never- 
more^ of absolute and eternal nevermore. 

Then came their dinner, when neither of 
them ate; a fragmentary dinner of odds 
and ends, served by the weeping Miette, 
and lighted by a solitary candle placed in 
the centre of the table. 


82 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

The evening passed heavily while wait- 
ing for the final moment. Everything was 
ready ; there was nothing left for them to 
do ; they were alone together in the chill 
solitude of the naked drawing-room, that 
had been stripped forever of the old famil- 
iar objects that they loved. In silence 
they awaited the coming of the carriage 
that was to bear them away, as one con- 
demned to die on the scaffold awaits the 
cart. 

Jean, bearing a candle in his hand, would 
from time to time leave the. room to go 
over the house once more, to take a last 
look at his little chamber. He might not 
even console himself, boylike, with the 
promise that he would buy all back again 
at some future day, for those new-comers, 
scorning the humble home that his mother 
had tended with such loving care, were to 
begin their work of destruction on the mor- 
row. 

About ten o’clock there was a sound of 
wheels in the street, a dull, menacing rum- 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 83 

ble at first, in the distance, on the stones. 
Jean was the first to hear it. When they 
were apprized of what it was, that an omni- 
bus from the station had halted before 
their door, it was as if Death had touched 
them with his icy finger, and instinctively 
mother and son threw themselves into 
each other’s arms. 

They descended the stairs ; from the cor- 
ridor below Miette’s sobs came to their 
ears. Behind them the doors, with their 
familiar creaking, heard so oft that they 
had come to love the sound, now to be 
heard no more forever, closed with a clang, 
as definitively, as irrevocably as the cover 
of a sepulchre. 


XVIII 

At Brest, to wliich they came in the 
early morning, by the raw, pale light of 
breaking day, they were chilled and trans- 
fixed — poor fugitives from a land of sun- 
shine — by the change of climate that mani- 
fested itself in everything, in the wintry 
weather, in the gray, lifeless atmosphere 
that pervaded the place. 

They caused themselves to be directed 
to a small hotel of the second class, dis- 
playing the timid, retiring manner of those 
who wish to limit their expenditure and 
look closely to their small change. The 
young man allowed himself to be guided 
and controlled in everything as if he were 
once more a little child, without will of his 
own, passively obedient, with a bitter grief 
constantly present in his heart. He suf- 
fered himself to be slightly interested at 
84 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR ' 85 

times, however, by all the strange sights 
that this sombre city of gray granite had 
to show him, with its massive ramparts, its 
hardy maritime population and its cloudy 
sky ; he often turned in the streets to have 
a look at the bluejackets, of whose frater- 
nity he was soon to be a member, half 
charmed, half frightened sometimes, by this 
peep into the unknown of the life that lay 
before him. 

They were some days before they found 
a dwelling place that came near suiting 
them. Everything that was shown them, 
within their narrow means, was so squalid 
and repulsive. 

She found less difficulty than he in 
bringing her mind down to the idea of 
those plebeian surroundings, that were des- 
tined to be, for a long time, if not forever, 
the enframement of her ruined life. Her 
spirit of rebellion against her fate, the 
objections of her bourgeois pride, had sensi- 
bly diminished; she could bow to her 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


destiny without excessive bitterness, if only 
the pitiful details might remain unknown 
to the other Bernys, if she might not have 
to drain her cup of humiliation beneath 
their eyes. And then her Jean, who was 
so entirely hers once more, who had drawn 
so close to her, served very nearly to con- 
sole her for all, to compensate for all. 

But he, who doubtless had inherited 
from the father’s side a greater instinctive 
refinement, he, on the other hand, grew 
restive under poverty that was patent to 
the world. When on board ship his 
sailor temperament could endure without 
complaining the coarseness of his associates 
and the privations of a seaman’s life, but 
on land he experienced an unconquerable 
aversion for everything that was repulsive 
or smacked too much of vulgar poverty ; 
it wounded him cruelly to see his mother 
derogate thus, in dress, in surroundings, in 
habits of daily life. He had the will and 
the hope to raise her from her present con- 
dition at some future day ; he would not 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


87 


consider their then way of living other than 
as a temporary makeshift. And in the 
receding distance of the irrevocable past, 
that they had so lately put behind them, 
fair Provence and the loved home down 
yonder stood prominently out before his 
vision, a spot of brightness in the midst of 
murky shadows, as if illuminated by the 
level rays of a glorious sunset. 

They finally decided — they had to make 
up their mind to something, for the hotel 
was too expensive — they decided on an 
apartment on the third floor of a house in 
the main street, not far from the harbor. It 
was a gloomy place, opening on a dark and 
noisome court. There was a single window 
commanding an outlook on the street ; from 
it they had a view of the by-passers below, 
splashing through the liquid mud in their 
wooden shoes, and on Sundays reeling and 
staggering ; in the distance a portion of the 
Arsenal was visible, and a corner of the 
sailors’ barracks on the hill of Kecouv- 
rance ; on every hand were tall and massive 


88 JEAN BERNZ SAILOE 

granite structures, of a deep hue of gray, 
that shone and glistened in the rain. 

They promised themselves that they 
would make a change at some future day, 
would try to find something better else- 
where. They installed themselves at first 
in their new abode as if not intending to 
remain there long, and complemented as 
inexpensively as possible what little furni- 
ture they had brought with them from Pro- 
vence, because they could not find it in 
their heart to sell it. And when the cases 
that had come by the more tardy freight 
train were brought upstairs and opened; 
when the dearly prized objects, that had 
made the journey from their old home, 
began to show their familiar faces in the 
dull gray light within the walls of the 
abode of exile, Jean and his mother, not 
daring to look each other in the face lest 
they might be unable to control their sobs, 
wept silent and slowly falling tears, that 
seemed to come from the very bottom of 
their torn and bleeding hearts. 


XIX 

Two more months are numbered among 
the past ; it is midwinter now. It is Sun- 
day, the day when the barracks are 
deserted and the bluejackets, abroad in 
the dim gray light of the narrow streets of 
the lower town, air their careless merri- 
ment, their bright uniforms gayly trimmed 
with red, and the light blue of their wide 
turn-back collars. A pale sun casts its 
light on the rain-washed granite walls, 
and, as is often the case in January, in this 
quarter of Brittany where the sea takes 
the land in its arms and warms it, the 
weather is mild and pleasant. 

Mother and son were leaning together 
from the window that looked upon the 
street, the window that was the one single 
attractive point about their new dwelling, 
89 


90 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOB 

its one eye tliat enabled it to see what was 
going on in tbe outside world. She, very 
simply dressed, more simply than Jean 
would have wished her to be, almost a 
woman of tbe people in ber deep mourn- 
ing ; he, in sailor attire. Already quite 
accustomed to bis new dress, be wore with 
tbe proper degree of unstudied negligence 
tbe wide collar that is thrown open in sucb 
a way as to display tbe bronzed neck. 
There was some slight change to be noted 
in his face; be was handsomer, perhaps 
owing to tbe silky black beard that be 
bad allowed to grow on cheeks and chin 
according to tbe regulations of tbe service ; 
but tbe eyes were tbe same, the ardent and 
dreamy eyes of a child. 

When Jean was at home and tbe sun 
condescended to favor them with a little 
of his light, they often sat there together 
by that window, and bad almost begun to 
look on it with eyes of friendship. For 
little by little, slowly, very slowly, in that 
dib’erent and lower .Sphere, whither they 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 91 

had been hurled like wreckage after a 
storm, they were returning to life after the 
great disaster, the sundering of ties, whose 
effect had been little less annihilating to 
them than that of death itself — he, because 
he was so very young, she, the mother, 
because she was there with him. And 
that mean abode, that they had first 
accepted with loathing and disgust, lo ! 
habit was beginning to render it more 
attractive in their sight, and for the 
moment they had abandoned all thought 
of leaving it. She had accomplished won- 
ders, moreover, in the way of arrangement, 
purification and embellishment, repairing 
with her own hands the rents in the tat- 
tered old paper on the walls, putting up at 
the windows cheap muslin curtains that 
gave the premises a bright air of cheerful- 
ness. In the most conspicuous places she 
had put the few ornaments that they had 
brought from Antibes, the candelabra, the 
vases that had decorated the mantelshelf 
in the drawing-room down yonder, and 


92 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

otlier small objects that were endeared to 
them by association. 

Safely bestowed in the depths of a great 
clothes press were the more sacred of their 
relics. There reposed the coat that the 
grandfather had worn last, his spectacles 
and sil\rer-headed cane, with some volumes 
of his favorite authors, and note books filled 
with memoranda in his tremulous old man’s 
handwriting. Close beside them, on the 
same shelf, were certain small articles of 
apparel, joriceless souvenirs of Jean’s child- 
hood : the shirt in which he had imper- 
sonated an angel at the Fete-Dieii^ and, in a 
pasteboard box, carefully wrapped in green 
gauze, the memorable little brown felt hat 
of that long-past Easter Sunday. 

He himself, formerly so inexpert and 
helpless in matters of household detail, 
was untiring in his care for this poor little 
kingdom where mother and son held sway, 
moving furniture about, driving nails, and 
taking off his jacket to scrub the floor, an 
operation that reminded him of holy-stoning 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


93 


the deck on shipboard. His roving instincts 
slumbered for the time ; remorse had dulled 
and blunted them. It would have seemed 
to him the depth of baseness to do any- 
thing that might add to his mother’s dis- 
tress ; he was swayed by his affection and 
sentiment of tender, compassion ; with the 
sensation of being his own master, since he 
was a sailor, he was of his own free will 
submissive and obedient — and that was the 
only possible way in which he could be 
so — and his self-imposed servitude even 
came to be easy and pleasant to him. At 
evening he came straight home from the 
barracks, devoting all his hours of liberty 
to his mother, never going for a stroll 
unless accompanied by her, and on such 
occasions giving her his arm with a charm- 
ing air of sedateness that she had never 
known in him before. 


XX 

It is tlie summer season of tlie succeed- 
ing year. 

They entertained a friendlier feeling for 
their humble quarters now that they had 
spent eighteen months together in them. 
Still, however, the old wound did not heal ; 
their banishment was hard to bear, and 
regret for the dear paternal home was no 
less poignant than ever. The memory of 
Provence constantly grew fainter and more 
indistinct, but in the same measure it was 
crowned with a bright aureole of golden 
hue, like a vanished Eden. The most 
worthless object among their household 
goods that came from home was a sacred 
thing apart, not to be touched save in a 
spirit of awed respect, and that never failed 
to excite feelings of sudden melancholy, to 
94 


JEAN BEJRNY, SAILOR 


95 


induce a quicker and more painful throb- 
bing of the heart. 

Jean had just finished his time on board 
the Bretagne^ a large sailing vessel, an- 
chored in the roadstead, where the fog 
always lay thick, that did duty as a school- 
ship. The simple and wholesome life that 
the young men lead, constantly exposed to 
the damp, salt-laden breezes, to the strong 
west winds that fill the lungs with oxygen, 
is a Spartan regimen, and acts differently 
on different constitutions, eliminating the 
weak and strengthening the strong. 

J ean’s natural vigor and robustness had 
increased considerably under these con- 
ditions. He was a good sailor, moreover, 
attentive to his duties, alert and energetic, 
and at the same time obedient and chary of 
his words. His innate independence did 
not rebel against the iron strictness of the 
discipline ; he, who was so quick to resent 
individual interference, accepted this par- 
ticular yoke, which is not hard to bear for 
the very reason that it is impersonal and 


96 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

uniform, and frequently ends in reclaiming 
tlie most untamable and refractory natures. 

Always punctual at drill, never mistaking 
one rope for another in the complicated 
tangle of the rigging, never shirking his 
duty, he had every quality of the perfect 
seaman. In addition to his other merits he 
had speedily acquired the spirit of dandy- 
ism that is characteristic of the service: 
the jaunty manner of wearing the uniform, 
the correct angle at which to sport the red- 
tasseled flat cap, which is kept in shape by 
a hoop of whalebone, the unvaryingly 
immaculate whiteness of the coarse duck 
jacket and trousers. 

But by no consideration could he ever pre- 
vail on himself to take up any kind of intel- 
lectual labor, for the greater his physical 
activity, the less disposed he was to mental 
application. An acquired roughness of 
manner and lack of sociability overlaid 
without extinguishing the germs of art and 
poetry that were originally inherent in him, 
and which, developed by the education of 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


97 


his earlier years, were at present indestruc- 
tible. Without losing his native air of dis- 
tinction, he was constantly becoming more 
and more a sailor, in looks, language and 
manners, a twofold character that has 
nothing inconsistent in it, however. It is 
a privilege accorded the seafaring man 
that he may in many instances display the 
most astonishing freedom in language and 
behavior, and yet never be trivial or vulgar, 
never proletarian. 

So therefore, under these changed ex- 
ternal conditions, he still remained one 
whom mention of the immemorial Orient or 
a mystical, sonorous phrase would suffice 
to plunge into depths of reverie, into an 
unfathomable gulf of melancholy. A boy 
withal, always and ever a great boy, in his 
careless disregard of the future, even in his 
pleasures, associating with the youngest 
and most artless of his comrades, and going 
now and then to laugh in company with 
them at the wildest, most extravagant and 
fantastic spectacles. He furthermore still 


98 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


continued to be that one who, in the old 
days at Antibes, had befriended the old 
beggars in the street, and saved little 
kittens from premature death by drowning 
in the gutter; reserving his kindness and 
pity for the more humble among his ship- 
mates and those from whom fortune with- 
held her smiles. 

At intervals, as inclination prompted, he 
abandoned himself nowadays to his old 
propensity for adventures of the street, 
which liad lain doi’inant for a lone: time 

o 

after their arrival at Brest. On leaving 
the barracks of a fine evening he would 
allow himself to be diverted from his 
homeward road by the pretty muslin coif 
of some gentle Breton maiden, or by the 
gay feathers of some bonnet encountered 
on the highway, and would afterward ex- 
culpate himself to his anxiously waiting 
mother by a wonderful story manufactured 
out of whole cloth, lying in such cases with 
no more compunction than a child, for the 
sake of saving her pain. And if he was 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 99 

detected and convicted of his deceitful 
intentions, he would lower his laughing 
eyes wuth the manner of a schoolboy caught 
red-handed in some peccadillo, who has no 
remorse and will do the same thing again 
as soon as the teacher’s back is turned. In 
all other respects, however, he manifested 
such respect and tender devotion for his 
mother that the poor lady was compara- 
tively happy in her altered circumstances. 

In their modest way of living, too, a 
little ease and comfort w^ere beginning to 
return to the forlorn little household. 
When the affairs in Provence came to be 
finally settled uj), the widow found that 
she had left a small capital sufficient to 
produce an annual income of seven or eight 
hundred francs, and after bravely serving 
her apprenticeship, she was now working 
at embroidering the ornaments and insignia 
of gold til at are worn by naval officers. 

She dressed with extreme simplicity, 
almost like a working woman, in spite of 
all Jean could do or say, who worried a 


100 jean berny, sailor 

good deal over his mother’s gowns and 
thought they could never be too line ; it 
pained him to see her go out upon the 
street weaiing a little black worsted shawl, 
and it was his constant dream that some 
day he would restore her to her former 
position in life. The neighbors, the other 
tenants of the immense granite barrack 
where they lived, and of which the walls 
were always dripping with moisture, had 
been made to keep their distance during 
the first few months, then gradually closer 
relations had developed. They said : 
“They are people who have seen better 
days,” and being good-hearted women at 
bottom, they did not harbor malice toward 
the strangers for their coolness on first 
acquaintance. 

With the family in Provence a few let- 
ters had been exchanged at first at rare and 
increasing intervals. But the answers to 
their missives came more and more tardily, 
and when they came were more and more 
insolently patronizing tow^ard this ruined 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 101 

widow and her son the bluejacket, and so 
they allowed their relations with Antibes 
to fall into a state of desuetude — until that 
day, the object of their dreams, when Jean, 
wearing a captain’s uniform, should present 
himself once more with head erect in his 
native land, and bring his mother to her 
own again. And now that poor old 
Miette, in her unwillingness to serve 
other masters, had gone away to die, up in 
her village among the mountains, they had 
the distinct impression that they two were 
alone in the world, that they were two 
lonely outcasts, whom no one acknowl- 
edged, and who had ceased to be of account 
to anyone. 

For whom, then, should she trouble her- 
self to maintain the dress and appearance 
of a lady? There were moments of dis- 
couragement when she was tempted to give 
up and let everything go by the board, and 
when her Jean, with a pride greater than 
hers, reasoned with her kindly, ^AVell, 
what can you expect from a sailor’s moth- 


102 


JEAN BERNT, BAILOR 


er ! ” slie would answer in a tone bordering 
on bitterness, wbicb recalled the misunder- 
standings and harsh words of days gone by, 
but the effect of which she would make 
haste to temper with a kiss and an affec- 
tionate smile. 


XXI 

Their second year at Brest, was drawing 
to an end. 

On an evening when the weather was 
more than usually fine mother and son 
were seated at their window — that is to 
say, at the single window of their mean 
and contracted dining-room, which was the 
only one that looked upon the street. It 
was there, whenever the west wind did not 
blow too hard, that their pleasantest mo- 
ments were spent, in restful idleness and 
conversation. The thickness of the wall, 
substantial as a city’s rampart, afforded a 
wide comfortable place on which to rest 
their elbows, and they had furnished it 
with a cushion covered with red cloth, as 
the usage of the quarter demanded should 
be done for the windows of every apart- 
103 


104 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

merit that laid any claim at all to gen- 
tility. 

What they beheld from there had not 
the attraction of strangeness or unfamiliar- 
ity ; there were certain persons who came 
and went regularly every day at the same 
hour that they looked on as old acquaint- 
ances, so well had they come to know their 
faces and general aspect ; some afforded 
Jean food for merriment, and he would 
counterfeit the voice of a little child and 
say something like this: ^‘Wait for me, 
mother dear ; the young lady with the 
parrot’s nose has not gone by yet, and you 
know I can’t come to the table until she 
does.” Beneath them, slightly raised above 
the level of the sidewalk, was an ancient 
terrace of granite on which was a tiny gar- 
den with a border of box ; twice already 
they had beheld in it the growth and blos- 
soming of the same flowers, fuchsias and 
geraniums, and a few sickly, stunted roses ; 
of those luxuriant southern vines that 
brighten up old walls so cheerfully there 


JEAN BEENT, 8AIL0M 105 

was no trace, but growing from the crevices 
between the stones were plants that had 
never been set out thei*e : mosses, ferns 
and the homely pink foxglove, friends and 
parasites of the cold Breton granite. And 
some portion of themselves had already 
passed into this entourage and remained 
there ; what they loved was not the local- 
ity, but their own anterior existence, that 
had taken possession of the locality, and, so 
to speak, impi’egnated it — and particularly 
their anterior state of mutual love and ten- 
derness, destined to perish and be forgot- 
ten. 

Among the self-imposed deceptions of 
life is the hold that we allow inanimate 
objects to take on us — a hold almost as 
tenacious as that of living beings, although 
the latter, it is true, are shorter lived than 
the former. Our attachment to localities, 
to relics, as well as to memories and tradi- 
tions, is really but a more cultivated form, 
a form adapted to our more highly devel- 
oped intelligence, of the universal senti- 


106 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

ment of self-preservation. Dumb animals, 
wlien death appears imminent to them, 
simply avoid it by flight, or defend them- 
selves as well as they can Avith the means 
that nature has provided them Avith, but 
against time, Avhich is constantly destroy- 
ing them, they have no resource. We, Avho 
are molded from the same clay and Avill 
doubtless return to the same dust, endeavor 
to defend ourselves by lofty dreams, by 
hopes of futurity, and by sublime prayers 
and invocations ; or otherwise, by love of 
our childhood’s home, of a house long 
inhabited by our ancestors, by the affection 
and respect Ave bestoAV on the poor little 
objects of every sort that are connected in 
any way Avith our irrevocable past. The 
attachment to things and places, that has 
its source in the fear of death, is the most 
childish of all liuman cults, reserve being 
made of that malignant cult of disappointed 
incredulity, to Avhich we return after having 
sounded the unfathomable black A^oid of 
wavering belief. 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


107 


Jean and his mother had been wishing 
since morning for fine weather, in order that 
they might pass this evening, the last before 
their parting, together at their window ; he 
was to start the morrow on a ten months’ 
cruise. And if it had been made expressly 
to their order it could not have been more 
accordant with their desire, this rare, warm, 
limpid twilight, which produced in them 
the illusion of being somewhere else, of 
being far away, nearer the sunny south. 
There was not a breath of air stirring, not 
a cloud to be seen in the heavens, and, in- 
deed, the beauty of the evening exceeded 
their wishes ; such summerlike resplendency 
added to their melancholy and made their 
parting more painful, by reminding them 
of their loved Provence, where evenings 
like this occur so frequently. 

The JResolue was to leave the yard the 
next morning on. her annual cruise in the 
waters of the Atlantic, and J ean was to be 
on board of her. He had arranged all his 
plans for the future, and they showed a 


108 . JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

great deal of judgment aud good sense; lie 
would return the following summer, wear- 
ing the stripes of a quartermaster, then he 
would ship without delay for a long cruise 
that would bring his term of enlistment to 
a close ; he would be very economical, and 
with his savings on his return would take 
a course in hydrography, and pass the exam- 
ination required by law before he could 
command a merchant ship. 

With these fine schemes in his head it 
would have been well for him to rub up 
his mathematics a bit. The text-books he 
had used at college, together with his notes 
of the professor’s lectures, were piled on 
the table in his bedroom, but he never con- 
sulted them except to open them, from time 
to time, for a look at the floAvers from Cari- 
gou that were drying betAveen their pages. 
By natural inclination, and by reason of 
his excessive fondness for physical exercise, 
he was indolent and incapable of exertion 
where intellectual labor was concerned ; 
for mathematical studies in particular he 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


109 


had an insuperable aversion, lie whose com- 
prehension was so acute in matters pertain- 
ing to poetry and art. 

Night was closing in, slowly and reluc- 
tantly, replacing the beautiful twilight. In 
the street below men and women, coming 
in from their evening stroll, were beginning 
to appear against the darker background 
of wall and pavement as indistinct dark 
masses, dotted here and there by the white 
coifs of the females. And by degrees this 
last evening stamped itself indelibly on 
both their memories, even as so many fugi- 
tive moments of our lives stamp themselves 
there, no one can tell why, to the exclusion 
of so many others. It occurred to Jean 
that he had really come to have a friendly 
feeling for that corner by the window ; for 
the various sights afforded by the quarter ; 
for that terrace garden that was not even 
part of his hired domicile, and for those 
frasfile flowers that unknown hands had 
reared. And she, the mother, now let fall 
her head upon her bosom, seeing nothing 


1 10 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

of what was going on without, her mind 
filled with anguish there in the gathering 
darkness at the thought of ten months of 
weary waiting, of the long winter that lay 
before her, so desolate and lonely, without 
her boy. 


XXII 

On the broad ocean. Stretching on 
every hand, far as the eye can see, the in- 
finite expanse of deep blue sea. Above the 
deck the towering fabric of snow-white sails 
and brown, tarry ropes, domain of Jean and 
the other topmen; a mechanism of won- 
drous organization, a thing of life almost, 
where every motor nerve has its name, its 
function and its life ; and, circulating among 
all those intricacies, the crew, that is to say, 
some hundreds of men, brought together 
by chance, whose names have suddenly 
been converted into numbers and whose 
personalities are absorbed in the duties 
they have to perform. In the case of those 
young and simple-minded men, who lead a 
life of isolation, cut off from the world and 
its affairs, the individual being suffers 
annihilation no less than in monastic com- 


111 


112 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


munities ; tlie interest they manifest in 
what is going on around them from day to 
day is limited to asking one another if the 
drill went off with snap and animation, if 
the log has been heaved recently and what 
showing did it make, was the navigating 
officer successful in getting his reckoning. 
In the orderly arrangement of this compli- 
cated whole everyone restricts himself to 
playing the special and unalterable part 
that is assigned to him ; he is the generator 
of the physical force that is required at 
such a given point at such a given moment, 
he is the spring of tlesh and blood that 
serves to tighten a certain rope and never 
any other ; his, too, is the hand that at a 
fixed moment of each succeeding day pro- 
ceeds to scour this hard wood pulley or 
polish that iron bolt; he accomplishes 
automatically the succession of duties that 
others before him — strangers, now for- 
gotten, who bore the same number — accom- 
plished with the same undeviating regular- 
ity. And in this entire renunciation of all 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 113 

volition and freedom of action, tlie whole- 
some and invigorating life they lead 
hardens the muscles, gives them their 
superficial gayety and brings the ready 
laugh to their lips, and makes it possible 
for them to throw themselves down any- 
where, no matter how hard the plank, no 
matter what the hour of day or night, and 
at once lose themselves in slumber, peace- 
ful as a little child’s, soon as the shrill call 
of the boatswain’s whistle has ceased to 
reverberate in their ears. 

But all are not equally insouciant ; in 
those who are naturally inclined to reflec- 
tion, reverie, beneath this superabundant 
material life, assumes a greater intensity in 
a more restricted sphere. In some, also, 
there is, so to speak, a twofold development 
of the nature, an outer and an inner man. 
A topman, for example, all whose talk is 
of ropes and sails, for whom life seems to 
have no object outside of his seaman’s call- 
ing, you will find at bottom to be a child- 
like being whose thoughts are centred in 


114 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

some little hamlet of the Breton coast, in 
the affections and small interests he has 
left there behind him in his distant home. 
And those things alone are accounted by 
him as having any importance ; he talks 
and does his duty on board ship mechanic- 
ally, his mind far away, unobservant of the 
strange countries he visits, unmoved by the 
inconceivable immensity of the sea. 

In the tranquil evening hours of idleness, 
a sailor (No. 218, we will suppose him to be, 
foretop starboard yardarm) becomes once 
more the Pierre or Jean-Marie of his earlier 
days, and goes and seats himself beside 
another young man from his neighborhood^ 
who has also resumed liis individuality of 
other times. They question each other, 
they seek in their dull, groping way to 
penetrate the mystery of each other’s soul, 
and thus a sort of brotherhood is inaugur- 
ated between those who have embraced a 
calling so full of danger and fatigue. 

Jean, for his part, spun yarns and con- 
versed indifferently witli all hands in their 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


115 


own language and manner, a thorough 
sailor at heart, and for the rest sufficiently 
elevated by education and refinement above 
the remainder of the ship’s company to be 
able to indulge in a quiet, good-natured 
laugh now and then at their artless com- 
munications. 


XXIII 

Eveey day, long drills and exercises, 
unlimited expenditure of muscular force, 
the sailors’ rude, long-drawn song timing 
the execution of the movement, the shrill 
piping of the boatswain’s whistle, the rattle 
of ropes running through the blocks, the 
sound of laboring chests, of muscles con- 
tracting and expanding beneath duck jack- 
ets ; all the noisy labor that is required to 
animate those immense, widespread objects 
that are called sails, and give to them the 
lightness and power that reside in the 
pinions of feathered things. 

But at eventide, in the delicious balmy 
weather, the hours of tranquillity returned 
once more, the watches beneath the stars. 
After the sun had gone down in glory the 
men collected on the deck to idle, spin 
yarns and sleep, to the accompaniment of 
116 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


117 


the gentle soothing motion of the vessel, in 
the pure, clear air. Gathering in little 
social groups they related thrilling tales of 
adventure or sung songs until sleep, the 
great restorer, came to them. 

As for Jean, in tlie beginning those were 
hours of darkness and gloom ; all in vain 
was it that he stretched himself nonchalantly 
on the deck like the others, with equal 
means to theirs of making himself comfort- 
able ; he felt that his nature was more 
complex than theirs, infinitely more com- 
plex. And then those were the only 
moments he had when he could think of 
the future, of the difficulties that lay before 
him, of the money that he must have later 
on to pay for instruction at Brest, of the 
toil and study he would have to undergo 
before he could obtain his captain’s certifi- 
cate. 

No, he could not see his way clear as to 
how he was ever to pass that examination. 
He felt moreover that on the Resolue the 
life of muscular exertion that he was .lead- 


118 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

ing was taking too muck out of kim, tkat 
every day kis mind was becoming more 
and more impenetrable to matkematical 
abstractions. 

Tke poor college note-books, tkat ke kad 
requested kis motker to send to kim on 
skip-board and wkick ke prized as if tkey 
kad been relics, were suffering terribly from 
abrasion of tke corners, in spite of all kis 
care, in tke clotkes-bag wkere ke kad 
stowed tkem; tkey were grown yellow, 
and tke ink was faint and pale witk age. 
The dark tangle of mysterious lines and 
figures between tkeir covers was becoming 
less and less intelligible to kim, an unde- 
cipkerable riddle, a treatise on occult 
arcana. And it would be necessary to 
learn all tkat afresk, and astronomy to 
boot ! Wken ke kad time and came to 
tkink tke matter over in tke calm repose of 
evening, tke impossibilities tkat lay in kis 
way terrified kim ; it seemed to kim tkat 
ke never could master tkem, tkat to try 
would be waste of time. 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 119 

Then he would comfort himself with 
the thought that he had years before him, 
that the time was not yet come for him to 
apply himself and bother his brains with 
work ; and he would bend his ear to listen 
to the great children who were chattering 
on every side of him, and laugh at their art- 
less talk — and a smile would rise to his lips, 
a smile and oblivion. Without troubling 
himself to think about it, he was gradually 
retrograding and, in a dangerous and per- 
haps definitive way, declining upon that life 
of the sailor that he had in the first place 
accepted only as a temporary makeshift. 

On days of rest, however, when the 
others applied themselves to their games 
and sports, or visited the ship’s library in 
quest of books within the range of their 
intelligence, Jean also often read books 
that one of the officers loaned him. But 
for a common foretopman his choice of 
reading was singular. He renewed his 
acquaintance with Akedysseril, whose 
resounding words and magniloquent 


120 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


phrases had been ringing in his head for 
years ; he encountered Heriodade and 
Salammbo, who, strangers until then, 
infused the glamour of their melancholy 
into the vague immensity of his dreamy 
reverie. 


XXIV 

Within the -tropics, on a wondrous 
evening when the Southern trades were 
blowing with their balmiest softness, 
the corporeal portion of his being tired 
with a healthy muscular fatigue, gently 
lulled by the slumberous rhythmic motion' 
of the ship, as a little child is rocked to 
sleep in his cradle, Jean was half sitting, 
half lying on the deck in the mild light of 
the new-born stars, in the midst of the 
gathering swarm of white- jacketed sailor 
lads, who were coming up from below, one 
after another, and forming snug little 
groups preparatory to passing the pleasant 
hours of evening in one another’s society. 
And in those moments of calmness and 
repose that precede slumber his thoughts, 
as usual, assumed a more sombre cast as 
121 


122 JEAIif BERNY, SAILOR 

the future and that dreaded examination 
rose before his mind. 

Close at hand, on his right, were his two 
chosen comrades, Le Marec, quartermaster, 
and Joal, captain of the mizzen-top, both 
hailing from the Cotes-du-Nord, surrounded 
at that moment by a group of young 
pays — or men from their own district — 
who were listening reverentially to their 
conversation. 

On his left was a little congregation of 
Basques, a race apart, who every now and 
then would break out and chatter in an 
unintelligible jargon, older than the hills. 

A little further away another group was 
singing in chorus a lively air in couplets, 
in which the refrain : “ Old Neptune, 

Monarch of the Sea ” came in every minute 
or so in a light, catchy way. 

Among the Bretons a blood-curdling, 
marrow-freezing story of mystery and dark- 
ness was going on, the confused beginning 
of which Jean had failed to catch. The 
yarn was of a suspicious-looking brig, dere- 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 123 

lict and abandoned by her crew, that had 
been encountered in the English Channel 
in the twilight at the close of a dim 
winter’s day; a ghostly wanderer on the 
water that no one dared board for fear of 
encountering dead men on her. 

The Basques of the group to the left 
were listening to a wild tale of warlike 
adventure beneath the blazing sun and on 
the burning sands of Dahomey. 

The two stories, equally lurid and fan- 
tastic, reached Jean’s ears in disconnected 
fragments, and were mingled and blended 
in his brain, over which sleep was begin- 
ning to exert its confusing influence, while 
from the chorus in the distance came the 
persistently reiterated refrain of ‘‘ Old 
Neptune,” running thread-like through the 
whole and connecting the parts by a sort of 
obligato accompaniment. There is small 
opportunity for privacy on shipboard of a 
flne evening, when the crew are all on 
deck. 

^^Well,” Le Marec was saying — he had 


124 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOE 

been a fisherman of Brienc in his younger 
days — “ well, at last we conclude to board 
her ” (it was of that grewsome derelict that 
he was speaking). It was none too light, 
for the weather was thick and the night 
was close at hand, and I tell you what it is, 
boys, I felt pretty shaky about that time. 
All the same, though, I raise my hands 
and catch onto the gunwale, so as to hoist 
myself up and get a look at what was 
inside — and then, my friends, what think 
you it is I see? A huge tall form, with 
black face, and horns, and a long pointed 
beard, that springs to its feet and makes a 
rush for me ” 

^^It was the Devil, wasn’t it?” asked 
Joal, convinced that he had guessed 
aright. 

thought it was, for certain, for 
a while — but no ; it was only an old billy- 
goat ! but such a great, big fellow, you 
can’t imagine. I don’t believe anyone ever 
saw his like.” 

And Turubeta, a Bascpie from Zitzarry, 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 125 

was running on at the same time, in a voice, 
that, compared with the deep tones of the 
honest Bretons, seemed shrill and piercing 
as a fife. 

It was the Amazon who had informed 
on the poor beggar of a spy, don’t you see. 
Then the other fellow, the big black man, 
catches hold of him. ^ Come along to the 
beach,’ he says to him. ^ Come along, come 
along ; I am going to chop off your 
head ! ’ ” 

And did he go ? ” inquired the skepti- 
cal Etcheverry — who was from Biarritz, 
where the sailors are beginning to acquire 
more modern ideas. 

Did he go ? of course he did ! Because 
he couldn’t help himself, don’t you see; 
the moment he was caught playing the spy 
he knew it was all up with him. He 
didn’t feel any too good over it, all the 
same, as you may suppose.” 

And the Breton continued to reel off his 
yarn of mystery and darkness : 

The billy-goat was the only living soul 


126 JEAN BERNY, 8AIL0R 

on board the brig, and as she was carrying 
a cargo bf barley in bulk, he had had 
plenty to eat. If I were to try to tell you 
how fat he was you wouldn’t believe 
me ” 

“ So he goes to work and binds the dirty 
spy’s hands behind his back,” Turubeta 
continued, that way, with a rope of straw, 
such as they use to fasten their horses with 
in that beastly country, and makes him get 
down on his knees upon the sand, and 
begins to hack away at the back of his 
neck with his old cheese-toaster. But now 
that it was fairly begun, the other fellow 
didn’t want any more of it — oh, boys, you 
ought to have heard the fuss he made ! 
And the Amazon grinned and showed her 
white teeth — see, like that, — to show how 
glad she was, I suppose. Well, you may 
believe me or not, just as you choose, but 
his regulation sabre was so dull that he 
could not do the job with it, and in order 
to finish the business he had to go down 
into his pocket and bring out a cheap little 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


127 


knife that I myself had given him, and for 
which I 23aid old Mother Virginie, in the 
bazaar at Goree, ten sous when it was 
new.” 

While the listeners were making merry 
over this original method of executing a 
death sentence their neighbors, the Bre- 
tons, were brooding reflectively over the 
history of the abandoned brig and the black 
goat, and Jean, who, toward the conclusion 
of the two narratives, had bent his ear alter- 
nately to left and right to listen, smiled 
indulgently at the childish credulity of his 
shipmates ; the sprightly song Old Nep- 
tune” also inspired him with some of its 
irresistible, contagious gayety. He had 
never felt himself so completely aud thor- 
oughly a sailor as he did that evening. 
His anxieties for the future, which had 
been growing less troublesome with each 
succeeding day, now vanished entirely in 
the sensation of well-being and repose ex- 
perienced by his weary body. He yielded 
himself up to the purely animal delight of 


128 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


living and breathing, on that pleasant even 
ing, of feeling his muscles so hard and 
supple under his loosely fitting garments. 
He stretched himself at full length on the 
snow-white planks, which were his most 
frequent bed, and made a pillow of the 
man who chanced to be next to him, a 
neighborly courtesy to which no sailorman 
objects. 

It was of all the twenty-four the enchant- 
ing hour on those summer seas where the 
gentle trade winds blow. For a moment 
he was conscious of the tall edifice of snowy 
canvas towering above his head and oscil- 
lating with a regular rhythmic movement 
upon the deep blue of the heavens ; then 
the bright constellations of the southern 
sky blazed forth between the sails and rig- 
ging, now growing more shadowy and in- 
distinct, and seemed to be playing a solemn 
game of hide and seek, vanishing at uni- 
form intervals and reappearing, then hiding 
again, to commence afresh their stately 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 129 

evolutions in unison witli the easy rolling 
of the vessel. At last they faded from his 
sight, and beneficent slumber, bearer of 
oblivion and peace, descended and sealed 
his eyes. 


XXV 


The succeeding montli of May beheld 
our sailor boy in Quebec, where his shi]) 
was unexpectedly obliged to make a long 
stop for repairs. There was a retired street 
in one of the faubourgs of the city which 
had long ceased to have the attraction of 
novelty for him, and from a small house in 
this street he Avas seen to emerge every 
evening in company Avith a golden-haired 
lassie, who Avas his OAvn affianced bride; 
frank and fearless in manner, her long 
bright hair floating doAvn upon her 
shoulders, well-dressed and ladylike in ap- 
pearance, she would lead him forth by 
paths among the tender young green grass, 
and stroll, unattended save by him, till 
nightfall. 

It had come about very quickly, that 
betrothal, almost in a day. A Frenchman, 
130 


JEAN BERNY, ‘ SAILOR 131 

a worthy sort of person in moderate cir- 
cumstances, a descendant of . the old Can- 
adian settlers, being on board the Hesolue 
one day, had stopped for a while and 
watched Jean at his duty, then suddenly, 
to the other’s astonishment, had blurted 
out : “ Come and see me ; I have three 
daughters ; you shall select which one of 
them you will, and she shall be your wife.” 
And that Avas the way he made the girl’s 
acquaintance. 

. To tell the truth, he had never by word 
of mouth announced a preference for one 
of the three sisters over the other two, but 
it was evident enough that pretty Mar’ was 
the object of liis clioice, and in their capacity 
of plighted loA^ers they Avent together Avhen 
and where they pleased, and no one had a 
Avord to say against it. AVIiile the vessel 
was undergoing repairs, his time was his 
own pretty much every eA^eniug ; hence he 
was at liberty to go and avoo his Marie 
when he Avould, in that house Avhere the 
parents seldom showed their faces, and 


132 JEAN BEENY, SAILOE 

where the two other girls treated him as if 
he had already been their brother. 

The whole affair seemed to him to have 
a fantastic air of improbability about it, 
as had the spring, which to him was no 
spring at all, and it made him smile to see 
Mar’ in those long, cold evenings, wearing 
muslin dresses and crowning her glorious 
golden mane with a straw hat. That sud- 
den engagement, those uncertain evenings 
of May, appeared to him equally unstable, 
equally liable to change and pass away like 
all things terrestrial. 

Astonished, and it must be confessed, 
considerably amused at the beginning, at 
a later period unwilling to wound the sus- 
ceptibilities of his new friends, who, if 
eccentric, were kind-hearted and worthy 
people, he let the days run on without say- 
ing anything to intimate his non-acceptance 
of the old man’s proposal — Marie’s fresh, 
pink cheeks, and pretty face meanwhile 
contriving to find fresh favor in his eyes 
with each succeeding day. 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 133 

“ Let the corvette go back to France,” 
the father said, “ and stay with us. W e 
can send and bring your mother over, you 
know. I have been wishing all along that 
I might have a Frenchman for a son-in-law, 
an active, industrious young man, and 
above all, dark-complexioned — because my 
daughters are too fair, and my wife has 
two sisters who are albinoes. Now you un- 
derstand me.” Then he went on to disclose 
his plans for the future, and explain the 
nature of the business (an open air occupa- 
tion of great promise) that he proposed to 
share with the husband of his daughter. 

But when the day came for them to sail 
Jean stuck by his ship. What, desert the 
flag, renounce all hope of ever again be- 
holding the shores of France, the little 
house at Antibes, the garden of Carigou — 
he would rather have lain down and died 
at once ! And then there was so little in 
that land of America that appealed to his 
soul of poet and lover of the Orient, that 


134 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


took pleasure in nothing save old ruins, 
the immutable, the dead past. 

His heart was a little heavy, howevei’, 
while they were getting aboard the anchor 
to the sound of a cheerful refrain. He re- 
gretted to leave that Marie, with her golden 
hair that had so often swept his face, 
blown by the wind ; perhaps he regretted 
more the parcels of his existence, the 
crumbs of love, that he had left by the road- 
side, among the grass, during their walks 
at eventide. 

He sailed awmy, telling himself that he 
would write soon, that he would certainly 
return, w^ould marry her, perhaps. But he 
was so constituted that with the exception 
of his mother and his childish memories 
of Provence, there was nothing that had 
power to stir his feelings or readily awaken 
his affections. Emotion slipped from off 
him, so to speak, and found no chink or 
cranny by wdiich to peneti’ate his inner 
nature through its envelope of careless un- 


concern. 


XXVI 

Mother, let me have just one look at 
the little brown hat I wore that Easter 
Sunday.” 

The words were spoken in an accent that 
recalled Antibes, and with a comical imita- 
tion of the lisping utterance of a little 
child, that he assumed occasionally to amuse 
his mother and bring a smile to her lips. 
She opened the press where the relics were 
kept, took from it a bandbox of antiquated 
shape, and held up for his inspection the 
liat that was inside, carefully wrapped in 
gauze. 

Jean had reached home that same day 
from his cruise on board Itesolue, and 
this evocation of ancient memories consti- 
tuted one of the melancholy pleasures of his 
return. The little cambric shirt, the grand- 
135 


136 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


father’s coat and cane were also brought 
out and looked at, and then the poor, paltry 
objects were carefully laid away again. 

Afterward she showed him the various 
alterations and improvements she had made, 
in his chamber particularly; there was a 
knitted counterpane for his bed, the work 
of her hands during the long winter even- 
ings, when her tired eyes were unable 
longer to see the stitches and she had to lay 
aside her embroidery work for the officers. 
“ I grant you it looks a good deal like the 
spreads poor people use,” she said, “but 
what would you have, my son ? it is use- 
ful, it is warm, and when I am gone you 
will remember it was your mother made 
it.” 

To him everything appeared very nice, 
very pretty; after the Spartan simplicity 
that prevailed on shipboard, the neatly 
kept little apartment, with its freshly ironed 
muslin curtains, white as the driven snow, 
had an air almost of luxury. And yet, on 
this, his day of home-coming, the sky was 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 137 

overcast and sombre ; a pelting, relentless 
summer rain storm, cold as winter, was 
inundating Brest, shedding its gloom on 
everything. 

She looked admiringly on him, her boy, 
in the full splendor of his one-and- twenty 
years, so supple and tall of stature, with 
broad, square shoulders, the pure profile 
and warm complexion set in a frame of 
soft black beard. But what she admired 
and loved most of all was his great eyes, 
with their dark Arab brows and lashes, soft 
as velvet, eyes in which, when turned 
affectionately on her, she could read the 
candid smile of childhood. 

He stood well with his superiors, more- 
over, having acquired their favor by his 
close attention to his duties, and came home 
wearing on his sleeves the stripes of 
quartermaster, which are not given in the 
navy except for good and sufficient reason. 
On board ship the promptness of his intel- 
ligence, his decision, his self-control and 
forceful manner had secured appreciation. 


138 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

and in addition to these seamanlike qual- 
ities his officers, under his air of silent 
reserve, had noted in him an unusual supe- 
riority in matters outside of his calling, and 
had never failed to treat him with special 
consideration. 

Since leaving Quebec the Hesolue had 
twice touched at foreign ports, and still 
Jean had not written to Marie. At odd 
moments he felt a sensation of regret, his 
conscience pricked him for the sorrow he 
had brought to her, and on the day he 
landed he made an inward vow that on the 
morroWj without fail, the importunate letter 
should be dispatched for Canada. Even 
were the fair one not tenderly beloved, to 
refrain from writing was quite consistent 
with the sailor habits and turn of mind to 
which Jean was becoming constantly more 
and more subjected ; but in addition to 
that he was also specially afflicted by nature 
with that particular inertia, the inertia of 
letter writing, than which there is nothing 
more difficult to overcome. 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


139 


And the morrow came and went, and 
many a morrow after it ; the image of the 
fair young girl gradually became less dis- 
tinct and faded from his memory ; he never 
wrote to her. 


XXVII 

On a fine evening in August of that 
same year, Jean andliis mother were seated 
at their window, their elbows resting on 
the red cushion that covered the broad 
ledge of granite. There had been a great 
storm, a long and bitter disagreement 
between the pair ; the first, it is true, since 
the evil days of long ago. But now the 
storm had subsided ; all was forgotten and 
forgiven, and they were at one again. 

As his compulsory period of apprentice- 
ship was drawing to a close, it was his 
mother’s wish that he should adopt the 
only sensible course, which was, that he 
should remain there in Brest and take a 
course in hydrography ; it was her belief 
that by giving his whole mind and atten- 
tion! to his studies he might obtain his 
140 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 141 

master’s certificate tlie following year and 
secure employment as an officer with some 
of the great steamship lines — if in the 
Mediterranean trade so much the better — 
and then their future would be clear before 
them. 

But to J ean, who during the entire cruise 
had not opened a book on mathematics and 
had devoted all his attention to the more 
practical side of his |)rofession, it seemed 
that what algebra and trigonometry 
remained to him subsisted in his head in 
the condition of a badly snarled skein, to 
disentangle which would be beyond his 
power, and, with a feeling of childish terror, 
he imagined that to attempt to master those 
abstractions would be a labor no less ardu- 
ous than those that Hercules inflicted on 
himself. He had not been economical and 
saved his money, either, while visiting those 
American ports, so that his mother’s 
embroidering needle would have to earn 
subsistence for them both, and he, not over 
well pleased with himself, did not take 


142 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


kindly to tlie idea of living, at tlie age of 
twenty-one, on the product of her labor. 

N’ever an easy subject to guide and influ- 
ence, even when a boy, notwithstanding 
his generous, warm-hearted disposition, he 
now became obstinate and sullen, with eyes 
no longer the same ; with the curt, harsh 
voice of the old evil days when his mother 
addressed to him an ill-timed reproach, 
one of those w^ell-meant but inopportune 
reproaches that for a time cause the heart 
to close impenetrably. 

Then he opposed his wdll to hers with 
silent stubbornness, for he was harboring 
another project of his own, which tempted 
him by the ease with which it might be 
carried into execution, and would deliver 
him from the dreaded mathematical course : 
to re-enlist in the navy! Moreover, the 
sailor’s life had a strong hold on his imagin- 
ation, by reason of that inexplicable charm 
of which so many young men have felt the 
influence. 

And now the project was an accom- 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 143 

plished fact ; lie had signed his liberty 
away the day before, irrevocably ; had con- 
cluded a pact that bound him to wear the 
blue shirt for another five years. 

When he awoke that morning, however, 
and with returning consciousness the irrep- 
arableness of what he had done dawned 
on his mind, he reproached himself for his 
own folly, and was oppressed by a bitter 
presentiment of the evil that was to result 
from it. He announced the news to his 
mother while they were eating their silent 
breakfast, treating the matter as something 
quite in the ordinary, in a few brief, care- 
less words. She, who had vaguely sus- 
pected the truth, looked at him without 
saying a word, without any expression of 
surprise, with mournful eyes to which the 
tears came welling ; then he, vanquished 
in turn, took her in his arms and their 
difference was no more. They remained 
thus for a long time, pressed to each other’s 
bosom in a close embrace of tenderness and 
forgiveness, those two forsaken ones, who 


144 jean BEHNY, SAILOM 

were yet more cast down by this new out- 
look for the future. “ But how, how could 
I have done otherwise?” he said to her, 
very gently, in a tone of kind reproach — 
and he almost succeeded in persuading her 
that he was right. As he was all in all to 
her, her joy and delight that he and she 
were reconciled once more were such that 
she readily yielded to his arguments, and 
did not discuss the issue further, or seek to 
restrain him. 

The whole of that afternoon they 
devoted to reconstructing their plans on 
these altered foundations, exchanging 
views how they were to act to make the 
most of the new situation. 

He would start on a cruise at the earliest 
moment possible; fortunately, his name 
was among the first of those available. 
An officer whom he had known on board 
the Re^olue had promised to get a berth 
for him on the Navarin, that would sail in 
a couple of weeks to circumnavigate the 
world, a ten months’ cruise. He would 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 145 

apply himself and work during this long 
voyage, in which he would have nothing to 
distract him, separated as he would be 
from civilized life. He would be saving 
and come back with money in his pocket, 
which he could do now that he had the 
pay of a quartermaster. His position as 
a sailor would entitle him to attend the 
lectures of the course without paying — so 
many others do so — and once his examina- 
tion passed successfully he would have a 
right to demand his discharge, and his five 
years would be reduced to two. 

Entirely reconciled and at peace with 
each other, looking bravely forward to the 
future, they contemplated from their win- 
dow the summer day drawing to an end. 
They pursued their train of thought in 
silence, allowing their eyes to wander over 
those mean and squalid surroundings that 
chance had allotted them as their horizon, 
and where by degrees external objects 
were growing dim and indistinct in the 
gathering dusk : the little terrace garden 


146 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


underneath, the granite walls, the slated 
roofs, the tall chimneys boldly profiled 
against the golden sky. For them the 
uncertain future depended entirely on 
their strength of will and power to labor ; 
but they trusted and were not afraid, and 
more than ever, now that that evil crisis 
was gone by which had caused them both 
to suffer so and in which for a brief 
moment she had had a glimpse of the 
supreme ill, the miserable void arising 
from the feeling that she could not trust 
him. 


XXVIII 

It seemed as if Jean’s life was doomed 
to be dogged by an unrelenting fatality ; 
un^vise decisions, hopes unrealized, plans 
that came to naught : these were the things 
that fate appeared to have in store for him. 
He did not sail on that cruise around the 
world ; the Navarvii^s complem'ent was filled 
without him. Other seamen of his grade 
had unexpectedly returned from sea, and 
in accordance with certain inflexible regu- 
lations of the service had been placed at 
the head of the available list, where no one 
ever thinks of yielding his place. He spent 
the winter at Brest with his mother. 

Thanks to the increased pay afforded by 
his higher rank, they were able to command 
a few more comforts for themselves. He 
spent nothing on himself except what was 
actually necessary, and on Sundays his 
147 


148 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

mother found herself enabled to appear with 
him in the streets attired with some ap- 
proach to her former elegance. 

Sometimes he would bring a friend or 
two home with him; not those honest, 
rough and ready young men of the coast, 
be it understood, in whose society he found 
such pleasure, but youths of good family, 
who, for one reason or another, had entered 
the navy and, like himself, were men of 
politeness and refinement fallen from their 
proper sphere. He even invited them to 
dine with him occasionally in the little 
dining-room, where evidences of increased 
prosperity were visible, where the hand- 
some vases that they had brought from 
Antibes were filled with flowers for the 
first time since the flight into exile, and on 
these occasions he manifested much anxiety 
that the repast should be served in con- 
formity with the usages of good society, 
and that his mother should present the 
appearance of a lady. He would a^iologize 
for the extreme modesty of the service, and 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 149 

eagerly embraced every opportunity to di- 
rect the conversation upon the topic of 
their past, as is frequently the way with 
people who have seen better days, having 
a good deal to say of their mansion at 
Antibes and the silver plate that they had 
been forced to sell, drawing the long bow 
a little, and exaggerating the state in which 
they had lived in other days. 

The friend whom he thought most of 
was a true-hearted and timid youth named 
Morel, son of a Protestant minister in cen- 
tral France, whom dreams of travel and a 
longing to behold the sea had attracted 
from his home ; a wretched sailor, more- 
over, as he could not well help being aware 
of, from the attentions that were constantly 
being bestowed on him by the terrible 
sergeant at arms. 

Jean had at first taken him under his 
protecting wing out of sheer pity, and after- 
ward had become attached to him. And it 
was not long before he was greatly sur- 
prised at discovering in this good-natured 


150 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

protector, thorougli-paced sailor that he was, 
a refinement of which he had not deemed 
him capable, and conceptions of the van- 
ished Orient, and light, and death, more 
mysterious and deeper and wider even than 
his own. Owing to their many points of 
similarity, and to the many more of diverg- 
ence, these two men, who were liable at 
any moment to be ordered away to the op- 
posite ends of the earth and never behold 
each other’s face again, had incontinently 
conceived a mutual liking. 

In the same street where Jean’s apart- 
ments were, this Morel had a little chamber 
for which he paid ten francs a month, 
where he stowed away his books, his only 
earthly treasure, as he bought them, and 
whither he retired to pore over them. In 
this little library, the books in which had 
been selected with great care, Jean, Avhose 
approval was always reserved for the quint- 
essence, would rummage somewhat scoi*n- 
fully; and it amused Morel to see this 
friend of his, so little a man of letters, open 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 151 

a volume, sldm over two or three pages, and 
say in a tone that admitted no contradic- 
tion : No, none of that for me.” “ But 
why ? ” the pale and studious young man 
would ask. “ W ell — how am I to explain 
my meaning — that book says nothing to 
me, that’s all.” And each time he was 
right ; the book might be a work of erudi- 
tion and well written, but it had no inform- 
ing soul, or, if it had, a very small one. 
The books were few in number, moreover, 
that reached the level and met the require- 
ments of his misty, nebulous ideal, to which 
he himself would have been puzzled to 
give definite form and shape. 

The romance of contemporaneous man- 
ners, even the very best, had no interest 
for him, because his simplicity had never 
fathomed the complications of the life of 
the present day ; it either soared high aloft 
or else diverted itself with the veriest trifles. 
Thus, to explaiu, he could read with pleas- 
ure three times in succession a chapter of 
the Apocalypse, or Flaubert’s Temptation 


152 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


of Saint Anthony,” or some sombre ante- 
diluvian vision of Eosny’s; this was the 
kind of mental pabulum he craved, or else, 
when he desired relaxation for his mind, 
the stupid buffooneries and inane folly of 
the Chat-Noir, 

On the whole Morel’s acquaintance 
seemed to exert an unlooked-for influence 
on him, teaching him to view matters in a 
broader and more practical light, for he had 
never read so much as he did in his friend’s 
company during those long winter evenings. 

Now and then, however, he would break 
away from his books and the honest fireside 
to run after women. On such occasions he 
would take almost as much pains to hide 
his folly from the sedate Morel, who 
believed him to be at his mother’s, as from 
his mother, who thought he was at Morel’s. 
He got out of the scrape as best he could 
when detected, employing the lies of a 
schoolboy, the stratagems of a red Indian — 
which were successful, sometimes. 


XXIX 

As winter was drawing to a close and 
his twenty-second birthday was approach- 
ing, he received orders to hold himself in 
readiness for a cruise, which, in his forget- 
ful indifference, he had ceased to desire. 
He was to be forwarded with a detachment 
to another port, whence he was to proceed 
to Dakar and there, for eighteen months, 
form one of the crew of a gunboat on the 
Senegal station. 

He knew something of Dakar, the 
Resolue having put in there once, and the 
mention only of the name Senegal was suffi- 
cient to bring before him visions of dreary 
sandy wastes, of languorous evenings, and 
the sun’s blood-red disk, enlarged to .‘pre- 
ternatural size, sinking into the broad 
bosom of the desert. So, then, he was 
153 


154 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

about to penetrate to tbe heart of the 
country of the Blacks, by the mighty river 
that serves as a path for Europeans. The 
thought of it all had a strange attraction 
for him, especially the neighborhood of the 
great Saharian desert, the impenetrable 
marches of the Moors. 

By a special favor, and one that is seldom 
granted, he was accorded his liberty on 
parole for the last evening he was to spend 
on shore ; the detachment would pass be- 
neath his window at midnight on its way 
to the railway station, when he was to 
hasten down and join it upon a signal 
given by the whistle of the commander. 

The clergyman’s son, his faithful friend, 
was invited to share his farewell dinner. 
On the floor, beside his seat at table, lay 
the white duck sack containing his clothing 
and effects, packed and closed, ready to be 
slung from his shoulder. Mother, son and 
guest felt the influence of that profound 
oppression which prevails at the instant of 
some decisive crisis, as when death is im- 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 155 

minent, or a parting that may be final ; the 
three ate little, and in almost unbroken 
silence. 

Jean saw that his mother had placed her 
hat and cloak where she could reach them 
easily, prepai’atory to going out, and he 
divined her intention. “ No, mamma, you 
must not go to the station,” he said to her 
very gently, taking in his the hand that 
lay beside him on the table-cloth. And in 
answer to her teaidul look of disappoint- 
ment, that seemed to ask humbly why : 
“ Well, the others will be there, you see. 
No, don’t go ; I would rather give you my 
farewell kiss here. Morel can go with me 
if he feels inclined.” 

After dinner tliey seated themselves 
before the fire expectantly, talking very 
little, their conversation broken by long 
intervals of silence, the two sailors smoking 
cigarettes, the mother seated beside her 
boy, and holding one of his hands in both 
her own. 

Mother dear, before I go show me 


156 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

those things — you know what I mean, the 
thino:s that are so dear to us — the coat, the 
cane, everything — I wish to look on them 
once more.” And when she hesitated and 
glanced at the stranger who was sitting 
there : What ! on Morel’s account ? It 
matters not to me, his being here. He will 
understand.” 

Then she produced them, one after an- 
other, the precious relics he had called for, 
and spread them before him on the table. 
He sat for a long time contemplating them 
in rapt silence, with bowed head, and the 
smoke of the fragrant tobacco of the East 
came from his lips at regular intervals in 
thin blue jets and rose in spirals on the 
air. And as they Avere removed and van- 
ished from his sight, envelo23ed anew in 
their muslin cerements, he experienced that 
same impression of hopeless parting, that 
sensation of nevermore,” that had visited 
him that evening when for the last time 
he closed behind him the garden-gate of 
Carigou. 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


157 


Suddenly, through the half-open window, 
there came a dull, distant sound, disturbing 
the silence of the slumbering street, the 
cadenced tramp of feet upon the stones; 
then the shrill note of a boatswain’s whistle 
sounded in their ears. AVhat, so soon ! 
Could it be the detachment ? The clock 
must be slow, then ; they had not dreamed 
it was so late. Jean, in a half-dazed condi- 
tion, folded his mother in his arms, throw- 
ing all his heart and soul into that last 
embrace, then, slinging his sack across his 
shoulder and followed by Morel, hurried 
down the granite staircase four steps at a 
time. 

Holding a lamp to light his steps, numb 
and chilled with grief, speechless, she 
watched him as he hastened down the stairs, 
then flew to the window and threw it wide 
for another glimpse of him in the street 
below; but all she saw was a confused 
group of men moving away, an indistinct 
black mass receding in the darkness under 
a drizzle of cold rain. He, on the other 


158 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 


hand, turning and looking up, could dis- 
cern her very plainly where she stood, her 
form outlined like a picture in the frame 
of the illuminated window. When the 
black mass was lost to sight and the tramp 
of feet sounded faint in the distance, she 
closed the sash — and was alone. Dry-eyed, 
benumbed and stupefied, trembling in every 
limb and her forehead bedewed with a cold 
perspiration, with a sensation unknown to 
her hitherto, that none of Jean’s other 
departures had caused her, of utter loneli- 
ness and desolation, she sank upon a chair 
before the expiring fire, and mechanically 
took from the stone slab of the mantel in 
her tremulous fingers a cigarette, his last 
cigarette, that even now was exhaling its 
parting breath. 


XXX 

On the day of his arrival at the port to 
which he had been dispatched he was in- 
formed that another quartermaster had 
returned to barracks the day before, with a 
claim that took precedence over his, and 
was to have his position on the vessel sta- 
tioned olf Senegal. 

It is in this way that many sailors’ lives 
are passed in traveling on bootless errands. 
Dispatched in this direction and in that, 
like bales of merchandise, and, for the most 
part, desiring nothing so much as active ser- 
vice at sea, they are frequently condemned 
to long periods of inactivity at the naval 
stations, where, at evening, they seem to 
enjoy themselves so well. 

Ended, or at least put off indefinitely, 
were his anticipations of a protracted 
cruise. 


150 


160 JEAN BEMNT, SAILOR 

His place in tte list of those available 
for duty assigned him a position in the 
lieserve ” — which consists of a number of 
unarmed vessels that lie inactive, moored 
to the dock at navy yards, for indefinite 
periods of time. For him, it was as if he 
had been stranded in some strange and 
unlooked-for way in this little slow and 
lifeless town, with its rows of white houses, 
so trim and uniform, where the broad and 
unfrequented avenues ended in the old ver- 
durous ramparts. In this tranquil seaport, 
surrounded by wide grass-growm plains, 
strange as it may seem, there was no view 
of the sea obtainable, and were it not for 
the sailors who enlivened the streets at 
evening with their singing, one might have 
thought himself in one of the central prov- 
inces. This new description of banish- 
ment, which sentenced him to live on shore, 
and for a space of time that seemed to him 
unwarrantably long, produced in him a sen- 
sation of depressing melancholy; he had 
not reckoned on being exiled to a place so 


JEAN'bERNY, sailor 161 

near his mother, and never had he experi- 
enced a feeling of such solitariness as he did 
now. 

And then he realized more fully than he 
had ever done before the low position that 
the common sailor occupies in the social 
scale, for there were certain degrading 
offices that until now he had not been 
called on to perform. Among all the men 
collected on this Reserve,” there was not 
one fit for him to associate with as a com- 
panion. The best he could do was to form 
loose ties with two or three young fellows, 
cottagers by birth and very young and 
simple-minded, with whom, thanks to their 
common fund of childlike gayety, he man- 
aged to pass an hour occasionally, but to 
whom he was infinitely superior in intelli- 
gence and aspiration. 

Ever abounding in good intentions, he 
said to himself that he would endeavor to 
secure an exchange and leave the station ; 
that meanwhile he would live a virtuous 
and sober life, saving his money and sleep- 


162 


JEAN BERNY, ^SAILOR 


ing of niglits in liis hammock, although he 
found the sparsely populated ship and the 
deserted arsenal a very lonesome and 
melancholy domicile. 

A tall, straight, well-built young fellow 
of twenty-two, with great, gentle eyes, with 
silky black beard, he might be seen stroll- 
ing in the streets at evening, with leisurely 
step and lofty manner, his bronzed throat 
and the beginning of his mighty shoulders 
revealed beneath the ample turned-back 
collar of his blue shirt. AVith a fine 
assumption of indifference he shot careless 
glances at the girls and maidens as they 
passed, of whom none, however, seemed to 
rise to the height of his ideal, and he never 
failed at nightfall, before the firing of the 
sunset gun, to be within the gates of the 
arsenal, which closed and made him a 
prisoner until the dawning of another day. 


XXXI 

But on a certain Sunday evening, as he 
was strolling without definite aim or object, 
alone, as was his unvarying habit, and with 
his assumed air of gravity, he entered the 
courtyard of the railway station to witness 
the arrival of the train and amuse himself 
by scrutinizing the faces of the by-passers 
— and perhaps also, although he did not 
admit the impeachment to himself, with an 
embryonic intention of inaugurating a fiir- 
tation, in the pleasant March twilight, 
when the days had already commenced to 
lengthen and be more vernal. 

A bustling scene of Sunday life and 
gayety presented itself to his inspection, a 
crowd of worthy people returning from the 
country. He could not help smiling at 
the quaint head gear of some among the 
women. 


163 


164 jean BERNT, sailor 

“ You haven’t lost the little satchel, 
Madeleine, I hope ? ” inquired, in a tone 
that its tragic anxiety made comical, a good 
woman wearing a fringed mantilla, plainly 
a careful mother and housewife. 

He looked about him for the girl who 
was called Madeleine, with a feeling of 
amusement that he should know her name 
before he had ever seen her. She had 
passed on, and was walking away with a 
rapid step, but turned to show that she 
had the little leather bag in her possession, 
and in the second’s space that was granted 
him the little that Jean could see of her 
regular profile seemed to him exquisite. 
And then, as the surging wave of passen- 
gers streamed out through the archway and 
spread over the broad avenue, he followed 
her, enveloping her with a look that took 
in every detail of her dress and person. 
Seen, even as he saw her, from behind, she 
was altogether charming, supple and slender 
of form, with delicately molded neck and 
head, attired with a simple elegance that 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 165 

had in it something of distinction. He cast 
a glance of inspection also on the parents ; 
they appeared to be small trades -people, or 
perhaps mechanics in easy circumstances, a 
condition that rendered it out of the ques- 
tion for him to aspire to their acquaintance, 
roving sailor that he was, and ineligible for 
marital honors. 

He hurried his steps, however, so as to 
pass them and secure another glimpse of 
the girl’s face, with the desire and hope 
that he might be disappointed on seeing 
her more near at hand. When we have 
caught a peep at a pretty girl along our 
way and find she has produced an impres- 
sion on us too deep for our peace of mind, 
it is a comfort, if, when we come to look at 
her later on, we find she is only an ordinary 
mortal ; it alleviates the feeling of profound 
regret inspired by the thought that for us 
all that beauty is as if it were not. 

He was now quite close to the girl whose 
name was Madeleine, hanging back so as to 
defer the moment when he should pass her, 


166 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

contemplating lier shell-like ear, the place 
where the dense growth of hair started 
from her neck and Avas carried up and coiled 
in a great lustrous braid like a skein of 
softest silk. Then, quickening his pace a 
bit, he opened up to Auew that oval line of 
cheek and chin, AAdiicli, when it is itself 
regular and beautiful, rarely fails to be an 
index to the remainder of the features. At 
last he made up his mind that he avouM 
pass her, and did so, Avith head erect, eying 
her from top to toe, and encounteidng her 
look, Avhich sank, but not too quickly, 
before his. 

And his mind was even yet more ill at 
ease, for alas, she Avas delicious ! Great 
Avarm broAvn eyes, very deeply set in their 
orbits and rather sombre, Avith a slightly 
frowning expression, as if behind them 
there Avere will and intellect. A straight 
profile; the chin a little prominent, but 
irreproachably pure in outline. A rare 
characteristic of that face, and one that 
attracted attention to it at fii-st siixht, Avas 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


167 


its absolute and entire simplicity of line 
and color. The features seemed to have 
been molded by a sober and self-reliant 
hand, whose aim it was to express nobility 
of form with the smallest possible amount 
of detail. The curves, so gentle, yet so 
firmly drawn, of cheek and neck, appeared 
to have been produced at a single stroke, 
complete in all their grace and beauty, 
rendering the labor of retouching super- 
fluous. The whole had then been left of a 
uniformly pale shade of pink hydrangea, 
which was the color of the translucent clay 
from which that fair face was molded. 
The pale gold of the hair, moreover, 
approaching flaxen, completed the harmony 
of subdued tints, than which nothing 
could be more distinguished. And the 
startling, almost unnatural, tranquillity of 
the ensemble gave an added life and dustre 
to the brown eyes, which, youthful and 
ardent, shone from their deep setting 
beneath the thick brows contracted in an 
involuntary frown. 


168 JEANBEBNY, SAILOR 

He relaxed his speed again, that she 
might pass him in turn and enable him to 
secure another view. The relatives, also, 
were this time subjected to a closer 
examination than before : they were father, 
mother, and an elderly lady, probably an 
aunt ; cheerful, wholesome-looking bodies, 
who might have been good-looking in their 
time. And what a simple air of honesty 
there was about them ! He hesitated to 
follow them, with a sensation of remorse, 
as if his pursuit might do her harm. 

He continued his espionage, but more 
prudently, keeping a good distance between 
them and cloaking himself in the shadows 
of the gathering darkness, to the end that 
he might at least learn where they lived, 
and not lose trace entirely of pretty Made- 
leine. 

When he had taken note of the unpre- 
tentious little house within which they 
entered (it was in the upper town and 
faced a small garden), he made his way 
down again toward the central quarters. 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOE 169 

and from tliere to the localities where the 
jolly mariner disports himself at evening. 
It was too late to think of returning to 
quarters ; the gates of the arsenal were 
closed by that time, so, to change the cur- 
rent of his thoughts, he entered a music 
hall, where facile conquests were obtainable. 

But he was surprised when he became 
aware the following morning that that 
pretty colorless face and those ardent 
young eyes had filched from him some por- 
tion of his being. On account of that girl, 
whom he had seen but for a fieeting 
moment, he had lost his sense of isolation 
in that strange seaport ; the dead-alive little 
town was less oppressively tranquil, the 
old ramparts had not so much the aspect 
of a prison. It was the delicious mirage of 
love, which transforms all the present and 
obliterates all the past. 

At nightfall, as soon as he was free, he 
bent his steps toward her house again, to 
see if fortune would favor him with 
another glimpse of her. 


IVO JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

And behold, at that very moment she 
came hastening up, as if in answer to his 
summons. He trembled as he recognized 
her. She was coming home alone, appar- 
ently in something of a hurry, carrying 
in her hand the little leather satchel that 
had been the innocent cause of so much 
mischief. She was neatly gloved, and her 
attire, more simple even than it had been 
the day before, had an indescribable air of 
appropriateness and gentility. 

She was coming home from work, that 
was plain enough ; therefore she was noth- 
ing more than a little wwking-girl, doubt- 
less returning unaccompanied to the 
paternal fireside ev^ery evening at the same 
hour — which would tend greatly to facili- 
tate matters. By her look, which was 
averted quicker than he could have desired, 
he saw that she had remarked him the day 
before, and was troubled at his appearing 
again in her path. 


All his good resolutions of confining 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


171 


himself to the ship and saving his money 
were scattered to the winds. That very 
evening he went into the town and hired 
for himself a small chamber in a sailor’s 
boarding-house, over a cafe that had not 
many patrons, in a linden-shaded street 
adjacent to the navy yard. To silence the 
voice of conscience he said to himself that 
he would bring his text-books and work 
there nights ; it would be so much more 
convenient for him than on those old ships, 
where he got so little light from the oil- 
lamps in their rusty iron gratings. 

It was an entirely new experience for 
him to be living in this way, having a 
room on shore all to himself and being his 
own master. Just like a young civilian, and 
by fits and starts he was alternately either 
melancholy or pleased as a little child over 
the sudden change. He thought constantly 
of her, delighted to have found out that 
her name was Madeleine, which somehow 
seemed to bring him a little nearer to her. 


XXXII 

Two days later, just as she was leaving 
the dressmaker’s establishment where ske 
was employed, a small boy, in whose ap- 
pearance there was nothing to arouse dis- 
trust, handed her the following missive 
from him : 

Miss Madeleine : 

Someone whom you have already seen three 
times, and whose name is Jean, will meet you 
presently at the spot where he saw you last even- 
ing. He begs you will permit him to speak to 
you, if only for an instant, provided there is no 
one passing. Jean. 

And now he was waiting in the gloaming, 
in a retired street of venerable white 
houses, the sidewalk bordered on one side 
by a row of lindens and on the other by 
garden walls, the route by which she hab- 

172 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


173 


itually returned to the paternal dwelling. 
It was really a most unusual display of 
ceremony for him, accustomed as he was to 
easy successes among that class of little 
girls who trip home at night alone and 
unattended, to write that letter ; but then 
this Madeleine was so little like the others, 
so little like, that he did not even know 
what he was going to ask of her or say to 
her. And he paced his beat, so many steps 
this way, so many that, or leaned with his 
back against the trunks of the lindens, 
impatient for her to come, and at the same 
time agitated by an emotion that was 
closely akin to terror at the thought of 
seeing her turn the corner of the street. 

She, even before she opened the note — 
the first that anyone had ever presumed to 
write to her — felt instinctively that it was 
from him. The poor child had had a 
lonely life of it, Of a proud and imagina- 
tive nature, she had been brought up in 
the austerity of a Protestant household, and 
until that day had looked with scorn on 


174 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


those among her companions of the shop 
who suffered the attentions of beaux ” ; 
and now here she was, sanctioning a pro- 
ceeding that was so entirely novel to her 
without astonishment or anger — because 
that proceeding came from him. In those 
three days Jean’s good looks and handsome 
eyes had occupied a commanding place in 
her imagination. She was disturbed in 
mind, with a disturbance to which until 
then she had been a stranger, a vertigo 
that made men, trees and houses reel and 
dance before her eyes — and all the more 
because the audacious letter that had 
worked the spell had been given her quite 
near the place of meeting, affording her no 
time to reflect, to change her route, to 
make up her mind to anything. And con- 
tinuing on mechanically in the road to 
which she was accustomed, her ears ring- 
ing, her knees weakening under her, she 
soon came, as if transported thither against 
her will, to the corner of the street — and 
turned into the lonely lane, between the 


JEAN BEHNY, SAILOR 


175 


garden walls — and beheld him, Jiim, a 
dozen steps away, advancing to meet her. 

To hear for the first time the sound of a 
woman’s voice whom one has come to love 
for her face and outward appearance is a 
sensation that is capable of causing either 
delight or disappointment. When, before 
he had uttered a word, she began to speak, 
Jean listened with rapture to Madeleine’s 
voice, which was calm and deliberate, 
pitched on a low key, very grave and very 
youthful, like the voice of a growing boy 
that has not yet assumed its definite 
tonality. 

Oh, sir ! Can it be possible — here in 
the public street, and in your sailor’s 
dress ! ” 

In sailor’s dress ! Ah, true ; I had not 
thought of it. But if I return to-morrow 
in civilian attire, will you speak to me? 
Will you, truly ? Come, now, give me your 
promise for to-morrow.” 

“Well, yes; I will,” she replied, raising 
her brown eyes, which encountered the 


176 jean BEBNT, sailor 

blue eyes in their setting of black velvet 
brows. They smiled on her, the blue eyes, 
with a glad look of gratitude, childishly 
soft and gentle in the masculine face, w^ith 
a dash of sauciness, and the protecting 
expression of a great nobleman. 

“That is a bargain, then,” Jean gayly 
answered. “ Good-night, Miss Madeleine.” 
He dolfed his cap to her, bowing slightly 
with a charmingly graceful air, and w ent 
his way with a firm and rapid step, skim- 
ming over the pavement and scarce able to 
restrain his desire to run and jump, his 
mind lightened of a great load, no longer 
fearing to be repulsed by that grave-faced 
young creature. He loved her now ten 
times more than he had done before, and 
thought ecstatically of what the morrow 
had in store for him. 


XXXIII 

“ My father ? He was a quartermaster’s 
mate in the navy. But he is superannuated 
now,” said, on another evening, in the 
solitude of the same lindens, the same grave 
young voice. 

And your mother — your mother is still 
living ? ” 

Oh, yes ; and there is also Aunt Mel- 
anie, who makes her home with us. That 
evening, when we were returning from the 
station, she was behind me, wearing a gray 
hat. Don’t you remember ? ” (He always 
addressed her as if she were a child, but 
with the most perfect respect, with never 
a word of love.) 

After a moment’s silence she went on 
in a troubled, half -frightened way, casting 
down her eyes and touching in turn with 
the toe of her shoe, as if it were a task she 
177 


178 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


had allotted herself, each of the cobble- 
stones that raised their heads among the 
dusty, sickly grass : 

I saw in the beginning that you were 
not a common sailor like the rest of them, 
Monsieur Jean.” 

“ Mon Dieu, in fact — well, perhaps I am 
not. But I am none the better for that, I 
assure you.” Shrouding himself in an air 
of mystery, he parried in this manner every 
indirect attempt to question him in relation 
to his past, with a few careless words of 
bravado. Then her imagination would 
construct a story such as we read in 
romances; he was some prodigal son, some 
scion of an illustrious family constrained 
to silence. 


XXXIV 

Things had now reached such a pass 
that they walked together regularly every 
evening — over a short course covering fifty 
or sixty metres^ never more — in the upper 
portion of that same street, whei*e there 
were no windows and no by-passers, which 
lay slumberously silent between the old 
whitewashed garden walls. The lindens 
that arched the lane had budded and 
bloomed, and now were constructing above 
the lover’s heads a dome of verdure ; the 
evenings were becoming longer, longer and 
brighter, as Time in his inexorable fiight 
hurried them on toward summer. And 
April was advancing with a rapidity that 
they would have been glad could they have 
checked. 

But April was not propitious to their 
179 


180 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


loves, the future of which seemed so un- 
certain, and which contrived to vegetate 
among those contracted and depressing sur- 
roundings, and never aired themselves ex- 
cept along that narrow footpath of white 
flagstones margined with green grass. The 
heavens, too, were frowningly sombre over 
their lieads, closing in on them like the 
contracted terrestrial scene, constantly filled 
with gray clouds whence the rain drops 
came pattering down on the young leaves. 

They might walk as slowly as they 
would, even under the pelting of such a 
shower as drives ordinary mortals, not lov- 
ers, to seek shelter ; the end of the street 
was reached all too soon, putting an end to 
their rather incoherent conversation, where 
intervals of silence so abounded. It is hard 
to explain how much of the ephemeral 
seemed to be mingled with the very essence 
of their love ; vague menaces of ending, 
and of death, and of oblivion, were hover- 
ing in the air above them. 

Jean, accustomed as he was to the gayer 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 181 

springtimes of his bright land of Provence, 
was disagreeably impressed by this chill, 
shivering April, devoid of sunshine, by this 
luxuriant vegetation, so fresh and green, 
beneath the inky sky, whither the neigh- 
boring ocean dispatched its breezes and 
great black clouds. His sojourn in the lit- 
tle stagnant town had certain aspects of tran- 
quillity that reminded him of that time he 
had spent at Rhodes, and of the evenings 
when there came down the hills to meet 
him, at the same twilight hour and by 
paths equally white, a young Greek maiden. 
But now his melancholy was of a dif- 
ferent sort, graver, and, above all, more in- 
fused with love — infinitely more infused 
with love. He was conscious of such an 
inroad on his afiiections as he had never 
known before, and with his boyish unre- 
fiectiveness lie yielded to it. Whither was 
he tending ? What object had he in view 
regarding that little Madeleine ? He could 
not have told himself. As far back as 
their second meeting he had seen, merely 


182 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

by ber fearless confidence and her way of 
looking him straight in the face, the kind 
of girl she was, and that he could never 
hope to make her his mistress of a month. 
As for marrying her, he never thought of 
stich a thing ; pride of birth and early 
education forbade it. He never admitted 
that he had lost caste when he lost his for- 
tune ; he was become a common sailor, and 
could take the rough and the smooth as 
they came to him as indifferently as the 
next man, could divert himself with Tom, 
Dick and Harry in a pothouse if he felt so 
inclined, but was as fastidious as the most 
consummate dandy at bottom as regarded 
everything connected with feminine ele- 
gance. 

He had never even so much as touched 
her hand. Not pressing closely to each 
other’s side, as is the Avay with lovers, but 
parted by a little distance, they paced their 
short beat along the shaded sidewalk in a 
constant state of watchful apprehension, 
with eyes and ears alert, talking in tones 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 183 

scarcely above a whisper, but saying tilings 
that might have been heard of all the 
world ; such childish, artless prattle, so void 
of all rhyme or reason, the whole charm of 
which lay in the inflections of their voice. 

And when they had come to the end of 
the lane, when Madeleine had given him 
her pretty look of farewell, he would take 
his post under one of the lindens to watch 
her as she moved away, turned the corner, 
and vanished in the noisy, more thickly 
populated street of working people where 
she lived. Even in the view thus afforded 
by her retreating flgure she was altogether 
charming ; her slender form, the form of a 
child that has but just attained its growth, 
was erect as a poplar, with shoulders well 
thrown back ; in her lithe, unhurried 
tnovements was the grace . arising from 
youth and health. 

As soon as she had disappeared at the 
street corner he would go away, conscious 
that his life would be a blank to him until 
the following evening, and not knowing 


184 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

what use to make of his time. Theu he 
would try the effect of returning to his 
little chamber and sitting down to his 
mathematics, a little common sense and a 
little anxiety for the future combining to 
urge him to the attempt. 

But who was ever known to work on a 
balmy evening in the lazy springtime, with 
dreams of love floating through his brain ? 
Moreover there was everything to tempt 
him, liberty, solitude, even that civilian 
suit that he had purchased for her sake 
and that had swallowed up all his savings ; 
that suit which facilitated his enterprises 
with certain beflounced and befeathered 
beauties, less retiring than Madeleine in 
their disposition. 

And most frequently he would go and 
flnish up his evening in the haunts of 
pleasure, among the music halls. 


XXXV 

“ In times gone by, when father used to 
go to sea,” she said to him, ^Sve were a 
great deal more comfortably situated than 
we are now. Monsieur Jean. But you 
know how it is in the navy as soon as one 
reaches the age of retirement. That is 
the reason why I have been working at the 
dressmaker’s for the past year. But that’s 
just how it is; I am only a little sewing 
girl now, and likely enough I shall continue 
to be one for the remainder of my days.” 

The last audacious sentence was enun- 
ciated in hesitating tones — it was so like a 
point blank question addressed to Jean as 
to his intentions — and when she had finished 
her cheeks were rosy red, and she averted 
her face, waiting for an answer that did 
not come. 


185 


186 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

But wBat did come, inexorable as fate, 
was tbe rain, bent on spoiling their stolen 
interview ; they could hear it pattering on 
the young leaves of the lindens with quick- 
coming drops, with a sound as if someone 
were emptying the contents of a watering 
pot upon a sheet of paper. Jean did not 
mind it ; his blue jacket and bronzed neck 
had seen worse weather than this, and he 
could stand and take a wetting without 
flinching; but she made haste to put up 
her umbrella, and he, after the pretty way 
in which she had just confessed their pov- 
erty to him, noticed how carefully she pro- 
tected her cheap little hat, that was never 
changed, and her gloves, that were also con- 
demned to constant service, and which ex- 
hibited marks of artistic darning at the 
finger-ends. He felt within him a sudden 
emotion of tenderness and pity for those 
poor little belongings of hers, to which 
he saw her devote such anxious care, and 
that emotion served to show tl^e extent to 
w^hich she had penetrated his affections, 


JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 


187 


toward those profound regions where our 
impressions inscribe themselves in charac- 
ters of fire, the more to make us suffer 
afterward. 

And I,” he said in a frank, jovial voice, 
do you think that I am rich. Mademoiselle 
Madeleine ? There was a time once, per- 
haps, but The one thing certain is that 

I was brought up by relatives who — who 
never expected to see me the sailor that I 

am become. But how ” Then he went 

on to tell to that most attentive of little 
listeners the story of his happy boyhood ; 
his failure at the examination ; how he had 
come to assume the blue jacket and bell- 
mouthed trousers of the sailor; the sale of 
the house at Antibes, and his mother now 
living at Brest in a poor lodging unsuited 
to her station, an exile from the land of her 
fathers. 

And Madeleine carried home with her 
that evening a heart full to overflowing of 
joy and gladness. It was an easy matter 
for her now to give up the romantic dreams 


188 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

that she had been cherishing concerning 
her friend’s past life ; she felt that he was 
brought so much more close to her ! The 
possibility, the radiant possibility, appeared 
to her for the first time that she might be 
his wife, with the enchanting prospect of 
seeing him installed for all time at the 
domestic hearth and board, and also in a 
cheerful bedroom on the first floor, facing 
the street, that Aunt Melanie had promised 
ever so long ago to furnish against the 
time there should be a young couple ready 
to take possession of it. And her con- 
science ceased to trouble her, moreover, her 
remorseful feelings, little puritan that she 
was, now that there was a prospect that 
all would be made straight in an honest, 
decent manner. 

He had told his story in one of those 
unreflecting moments that were so charac- 
teristic of the man, and not more than on 
the day before, or on any other day, had 
the idea of marrying her crossed his mind 
when he took leave of her with a pleasant 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 189 

smile and these lightly uttered words : A 
sailor and a sewing girl — we can give each 
other the right hand of friendship, you see, 
Mademoiselle Madeleine.” 

Meanwhile his aimless attachment for 
this strange little comrade, so pleasant an 
object for the eye to rest on, continued to 
Avax and grow within him, all the time 
assuming a character of chaste tranquillity, 
almost of immateriality. When perfect 
respect exists, conjointly with the certain 
assurance of insuperable obstacles, the love 
of the senses may go on living and growing, 
as his did, beneath the love of the soul, in 
a sort of dull slumber, until a something, 
or a nothing, happens to arouse it : a touch 
of the hand, a dangerous thought, a half* 
formed hope. 

And so they came to love each other 
with a tenderness that was as pure and holy 
on the one side as on the other. She, un- 
taught and ignorant in matters of the heart 
and reading her Bible each night before 
retiring ; doomed yet for a few pale springs 


190 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

like this to waste to no purpose her bright 
young grace and beauty, then to grow old, 
and fade and wither in the unvarying 
dreary monotony of those same streets, 
imprisoned between those unchanging walls. 
He, so young, yet already surfeited with 
kisses and caresses; for dw^elling place 
having the wide world before him where 
to choose ; liable to be called away at any 
moment, to-morrow, perhaps, never to re- 
turn, and to leave his bones in distant seas. 


XXXVI 

April had passed and May was coming 
in, veiled like its predecessor in fog and 
mist, sombre and sunless, with heavy 
winds from the sea and unseasonable 
storms. The lonely quarter where the 
lovers held their trysts was redolent of the 
perfume of the linden blossoms, ready to 
fall and die. 

They were old friends now, of six weeks’ 
standing. Grown bold by reason of never 
seeing anyone pass that way, they held long 
confabs under the lindens, and he, because 
he thought the uniform became him, ven- 
tured to appear in sailor attire. As the 
twilight lengthened so did their interviews. 

But it was no more than was to be ex- 
pected that prying eyes and ears, of which 
they were blissfully ignorant, should long 
191 


192 jean BERNT, sailor 

since has^e detected their secret. At the 
dressmaker’s shop the other girls would 
look at Madeleine and smile significantly, 
and if her parents had not yet been in- 
formed of what was going on it was greatly 
to be wondered at, for all the neighbors 
knew. 

One evening Jean, who, as was his inva- 
riable custom, had been the first to reach 
their meeting place, perceived a man, whose 
light hair was beginning to be touched here 
and there with silver, tramping up and 
down the sidewalk in an expectant sort of 
way, who, after a moment’s hesitation, came 
forward with an evident intention of ad- 
dressing him. He was erect and martial in 
bearing, and his blue cloth frock, buttoned 
to the chin, was of the regulation naval 
cut; manifestly some retired petty officer, 
who had converted his old uniform coat 
into civilian attire by cutting off the brass 
buttons. Jean had a vague recollection of 
the face for having seen it one Sunday in 
the courtyard of the station. But in any 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 193 

event, he would have recognized the frown- 
ing brows and long, reddish-brown eyes, 
set as in a cavern under the beetling pro- 
jection of the forehead, that the old mariner 
had transmitted to his daughter, with some- 
thiug, it may be, of his character and tem- 
perament. They looked each other squarely 
in the face, each understanding in an in- 
stant who the other was. 

Ah, it is you ! ” said the man in an 
unpleasant, gruff voice from between his 
tight-shut teeth. 

Jean’s only answer was to raise his hand 
to his cap in salute ; he was disarmed, 
because he was her father and had eyes 
like hers, and his feeling^ toward him was 
almost one of filial submission. 

Be off with you ! ” the man continued, 
with the same gruff, dictatorial manner, as 
if he were on shipboard giving orders to 
his men, but also with a certain indescrib- 
able softness that rose suddenly to his eyes, 
take yourself off ! It is I who will see 
her home this evening.” 


194 jean BEMNT, sailor 

And Jean took himself off, having first 
doffed his cap and saluted respectfully. 
There had been no spark of hatred elicited 
from the meeting of their glances, from the 
‘clash of their confiicting wills. 


XXXVII 

The next day all the quartermasters of 
the reserves were notified by a sergeant at 
arms that their presence was required at 
the office of the commander of the yard. 

All the men had a pretty shrewd idea 
of what was in the wind : one of them was 
wanted to go as a volunteer to the extreme 
East, and there serve for a year or two on 
board a small gunboat on one of the stag- 
nant, sluggish rivers of that inhospitable 
country, where the climate is almost certain 
death. 

Anxious considerations pressed on Jean’s 
mind. There could be nothing better than 
this expedition to serve his plans : he might 
go out there and complete his term of 
enlistment, saving up his pay meanwhile to 
enable him to spend a year at Brest after- 
ward and study for his master’s examin- 
195 


196 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

ation. He said to himself that it was his 
duty to go. 

But at that juncture Madeleine’s pale face 
rose before his mental vision, causing him 
such a feeling of deep distress that he 
paused, recoiling at the thought of taking 
such a grave and decisive step, waiting, and 
hoping that someone else would speak. 

Everyone was silent. A silence of diffi- 
dence, dashed with the sense of the danger 
there was in the enterprise. In addition 
to which it may be said that sailors never 
respond when applied to indirectly and in 
a body. 

“ I will go. Captain,” he finally said, 
tremblingly and in a very low voice. 

You, Berny, do you want it ? ” replied 
the officer. All right ; unless the admiral 
orders otherwise, you may consider your- 
self booked for the China seas.” He called 
him back to add these words, more terrible 
than all the rest : “ As regards the custom- 
ary leave of absence, you see, I believe — I 
am afraid that ” and his tone and man- 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


197 


ner intimated plainly enougli : you will 
Lave to do as best you can without it. 
^^TLe request for the detail was marked 
urgent, and if I am not mistaken you will 
start with the detachment for Toulon early 
to-morrow morning.” 

He could feel the violent thumping of 
his heart, and the blood surged through his 
veins, causing his ears to ring. He was on 
the point of saying : Oh, no ; not that ! 
Try to obtain another man; T take back 
my word,” but dared not. In the first 
place, it was so manifestly his duty to go ; 
and then there was the fatalism that, 
unknown to himself, lurked in his being 
and made him bow to the least sign from 
Destiny ; and finally, by a peculiarity that 
is possessed by sailors generally, he always 
felt his lips close Avith an invincible, mute 
reserve in presence of his chiefs when they 
were strangers to him. All he did was to 
turn on the ofiicer his eyes, dilated with 
sudden anguish, reply, ‘^Very well. Cap- 
tain ! ” and leave the room with the air of 


198 jean BEBNT, sailor 

a man who has been struck on the head 
with a club. 

He was granted no leave of absence. 
This is a favor that is almost always ex- 
tended to seamen who are ordered away on 
distant service, longer or shorter, as the 
case may be, according to the nature of the 
assignment; but in cases of urgency the 
leave may be withheld. 

He was consigned to barracks that same 
evening, where he made up his kit and 
adjusted his accounts, and where he was to 
remain with the eight other men of the 
detail until the time came for their depart- 
ure. They assembled in the dim twilight, 
under the archway of the courtyard, calling 
one another by name, curiously studying 
one another’s face, those nine men who had 
been so suddenly caught in company at 
one cast of the net; who were to be co-part- 
ners in exile out there in that strange land, 
so far from home, and share the same dan- 
gers and fatigues. No leave was granted, 
no opportunity to say good-by to wives and 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 


199 


parents ; that was the thing that seemed to 
them hardest of all to bear. Nevertheless, 
two or three were singing, but one, a young 
man, was weeping bitterly. 

His mother ! A feeling of deepest ten- 
derness filled Jean’s heart as he thought of 
her ; it was source of bitterest grief that he 
was unable to embrace her ; but it was for 
her sake ‘that he was going away, for their 
future, the joint future of them both. This 
distant service for which he had volunteered 
was to be in some sort the expiatory act of 
his life. Then, his conscience easy on that 
score, he sat down and wrote her a long, 
affectionate letter, that did much to tran- 
quillize his feelings. 

And Madeleine ! That he should be torn 
from her thus, should be given no oppor- 
tunity to speak to her, to send her a line by 
messenger, even to see her dear face once 
more ! Should he write to her ? But 
what could he write; ask her to marry 
him ? His heart counseled him to the step, 
although she was but a poor little sewing 


200 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

girl ; but then by sucb a marriage be would 
be condemning himself to remain a sailor 
all his life ; above all, he Avould dash to the 
ground his mother’s cherished hopes, whose 
dream had ever been that later on, when 
he should be master of a vessel, he would 
restore their shattered fortunes by taking 
to wife some pretty young heiress of Pro- 
vence. What was he. to do, then, since 
that door was closed to him, since her 
father stood between them and he would 
have to face down all social prejudices and 
conventionalities, against which, however, 
all his being revolted, this evening, in the 
overmastering love that filled his heart ? 

He seated himself at his table to write a 
letter of farewell to Madeleine; he com- 
menced two, which he immediately de- 
stroyed. To whom could he intrust a 
letter, moreover, so that she would be cer- 
tain to receive it? Would she be allowed 
to receive a communication from him in 
the house of her parents ? And to think 
that she was so near, perhaps at that very 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 201 

moment returning to lier home along the 
familiar ways," alone, distracted, straining 
her eyes to catch a glimpse of him whom 
she was never to see more. 

The end of it was that, at a late hour of 
the evening, he determined it would be best 
to wait and write her a good long letter 
from Port Said, or some other point among 
the first stops they made, at which her 
father could not take offense ; a letter 
bearing a foreign postmark would be more 
likely to be received, because the distant 
writer was less an object of dread, and it 
might well be that they would see no more 
of him. 

That he did not write, or that he put off 
doing so until a more remote period, was 
attributable also, in no small degree, to that 
mental inertia, to that habit of waiting on 
fatality, which was so important an element 
in his temperament — in connection with 
his subsequent stubbornness in adhering to 
the decisions, wise or foolish, as might be, 
at which he afterward arrived. And yet 


202 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

the remorse and distress he experienced 
were great — as was his love ; he had 
never known a passion to possess him thus 
entirely. 

The next morning beheld him once 
again in the railway station where he had 
first seen Madeleine. In company with his 
new comrades he took the train for Toulon, 
thence to start forth on one of those expe- 
ditions full of uncertainty and danger, the 
prospect of which made the shrill scream of 
the locomotive ring in his ears with a 
strangely boding sound. And as the wheels 
began to revolve he turned his eyes upon 
the window, with a sensation of infinite 
sadness and desolation, for a last look at 
the little walled town which he had entered 
a short four months ago with such light- 
hearted indifference. 


XXXVIII 

Aceoss the Indian Ocean the good ship 
Circe was plowing her way merrily among 
the waves, rocked gently by the trancpiil 
summer sea, her white sails glinting in 
the glowing light, hanging like a speck 
between the upper and nether expanses of 
deep blue infinity, and leaving behind her 
her ever-lengthening trail of snowy foam 
that flashed and sparkled in the sunlight. 

Port Said had been left behind some 
days before, and Aden also, and Jean’s 
letter to Madeleine still remained un- 
written. When, knowing himself as he 
did, he made the mental admission that 
there was a probability of this adventure 
ending as the other one had done, the 
adventure at Quebec with the golden- 
haired, laughing Canadian girl, he experi- 
203 


204 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

enced a feeling of serious dissatisfaction 
with liimself, and more particularly when 
he remembered how confiding she had 
shown herself — so confiding and so poor. 
At the recollection of her graceful and 
touching confession of poverty, at the 
recollection even of certain details of her 
attire, the poor cheap dresses that she pro- 
tected so tenderly against the rain, her 
little gloves darned and mended with such 
careful pains, he felt himself overcome by 
one of those infinitely tender sensations of 
pity that constitute one of the manifesta- 
tions of a deep, pure love, and he made a 
vow to himself that he would write to her 
as soon as he reached his destination. But 
then it was such a troublesome letter to 
write, since he had not yet made up his 
mind to marry her ! 

There were moments also when he was 
oblivious of everything, thanks to the 
mirth and merriment of his comrades, and 
to the entrancing grandeur of the spectacle 
that surrounded them on every side. 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 205 

Tlie Oilxe was to delay lier voyage long 
enough to set him ashore at the mouth of 
the Red River, togetlier with the other 
seamen who were intended to fill up the 
complement of the Estoc, This latter was 
a corvette, an old-fashioned sailing vessel 
with a great spread of canvas ; grown old 
in the service, and weary after many years 
of cruising, she was now going out on 
station in the China seas, which was to be 
the last act in her career. 

As it chanced, several of the old crew of 
the Eesolue had been drafted on board, 
and Jean thus found himself again sailing 
in company with Le Marec and Joal, his 
two former chums and messmates, as well 
as with several others whom he knew, and 
the ties of old acquaintance were drawn 
taut once more. 

Le Marec, who had attained the dignity 
of second-maitrej had been carried off his 
feet by a sudden gust of passion eight or 
ten days before they sailed and taken to 
himself a wife. He was become extremely 


206 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

saving, and liad in view one single object, 
which was to serve his time out and go 
with his wife and live somewhere in the 
neighborhood of Brienc, in a house that 
should have a garden attached to it. He 
was already grave and severe of aspect; 
wind and water, moreover, had conspired 
to impart a deep hue of purple to his 
countenance, which at times appeared 
fierce. There were a few white hairs 
beginning to show about his temiDles, and 
his one-and-thirty years, together with his 
extraordinary breadth of beam, made him 
consider himself entitled to assume a 
paternal air toward his comrades. 

Joal was in the mousqueterie, and was a 
good type of the helot of the service, his 
mind equally void of ambition or aspira- 
tions ; his limited understanding had sub- 
mitted cheerfully to receive the yoke of 
discipline. All of life for him was summed 
up in the strict observance of his daily 
duties : at such a time of the day he was 
to scour a certain portion of the deck with 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


207 


sand, at sucli another time he was to polish 
certain brass- or iron-work with tripoli, and 
he was never to permit himself to ques- 
tion the propriety or impropriety of these 
actions. Outside this sphere he was an 
excellent fellow, and his friends were sure 
of his affection and devotion at all times, 
and of his tender sympathy in misfortune. 

The other members of Jean’s mess 
were sufficiently agreeable, simple-minded 
youths, who spent much of their time in 
laughing and joking, and were pretty good 
at castle-building also, when they had time 
for it, although they did not know the 
name of this latter silent pastime. And at 
the pleasant evening hour devoted to spin- 
ning yarns and singing songs on the fore- 
castle, they would collect in little social, 
compact groups, then would lie down on 
the scrupulously clean deck and go to sleep 
in the white moonlight or under the blaz- 
ing southern stars. 

During the voyage Jean was disturbed 
in the profounder and more mysterious 


208 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


recesses of his soul by a multitude of 
tilings that liis comrades saw, but in a 
much more confused and unintelligent way 
and with infinitely less depth of feeling: 
the sands and mirages of the Red Sea, and 
its blood-red sun, setting each evening 
in terrible. Apocalyptic splendor; Sinai, 
which they beheld in the distance, glowing 
like a seven-fold heated furnace, against a 
sky of molten gold ; the ancient pastures 
of the Arabs, there, close on the port 
bow — all so familiar to him ! And before 
him lay the great, the disquieting attrac- 
tion, the enigma of that land of the Orient 
that he had never seen. 


XXXIX 


The good ship dropped her anchor at 
last in her haven at the ends of the earth. 
He had reached his journey’s end. 

He beheld before him, in reality, not in 
a dream, the little gunboat that had been 
in his thoughts so much of late. She was 
resting tranquilly on the bosom of the dull- 
hued, sluggish river, made fast to the bank 
among the tall reeds, in an atmosphere so 
stifling that the slightest movement brought 
the perspiration out in great drops upon 
the forehead. JEstoCj he read in large, plain 
letters on her black stern, the name that 
had haunted him all through his voyage 
with a sensation as if it were ominous of 
evil. 

This was her anchorage, and conse- 
quently this little nook of earth was to 
be Jean’s residence for the next eighteen 
209 


210 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

months. The Estoc^s new men had been 
brought to the spot at evening, at that 
brief, enchanting moment that succeeds the 
debilitating heat of the day and precedes 
the coming of the night. Extending along 
the bank of the river, the water of which 
somehow failed to convey to the eye the 
usual impression of grateful coolness, was 
a village among the trees, or, to speak more 
correctly, a road cut through the dense veg- 
etation and bordered with little portals 
that conducted to dwellings buried in 
masses of verdure ; a little way beyond 
this the road made a bend, and the pros- 
pect ended in the shadows of a gloomy 
forest. Imprisoned aboard their ship dur- 
ing their long voyage, with nothing to in- 
terest them save the view of sky and sea 
that they obtained from the deck, the men 
were unprepared for the strangeness of the 
exotic scene. All their senses were vividly 
impressed, and Jean almost forgot to 
breathe. Their lungs, too, seemed to ex- 
pand and contract more laboriously, as in 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 211 

an overlieated vapor bath, permeated by 
musky odors. 

The soil was of a bright red, the vegeta- 
tion on every hand of an intense metallic 
green, and the vividness of these hues was 
such that the only object with which they 
could be compared was the crude, fantastic 
coloring of a Chinese picture book ; even 
in the twilight the colors stood out in high 
relief against the increasing darkness; it 
seemed as if the red of the soil and the 
green of the trees must continue to be visi- 
ble even in the obscurity of night by their 
excess of brilliancy. The little portals 
that led to the hidden habitations were all 
preposterously fantastic in design, with a 
vague attempt to imitate animal forms in 
their ornamentation ; they seemed to 
shrink and endeavor to conceal themselves, 
as if ill at ease, under that perennial 
and depressing vegetation that dwarfed 
mankind and was victorious over every- 
thing. The men and women to whom this 
scene was the setting of their daily life- 


212 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

drama came and went, attending to tlieir 
strange little occupations ; they had small 
furtive eyes, turned upward obliquely at 
the corners; their yellow skin had bor- 
rowed a tinge of red from the red soil ; 
they walked with a catlike, noiseless tread, 
either bare of feet or shod with paper san- 
dals. The aspect of the domestic animals, 
lazily ruminating by the fences, of the birds 
nestling in the tree tops, of the most tiny 
flower that grew by the roadside, told the 
new-comers what life was to be for them 
in that remote hostile land that fate had 
assigned them for their abode. 

And this little world, living its life in 
death among the trees, a race apart from 
all mankind, did not appear so much sur- 
prised that it was thus as that it was possi- 
ble there should be worlds unlike it. The 
salfron-hued natives, whose bodies exhaled 
a mingled odor of musk and sweat, passed 
the sailors without condescending to turn 
their heads, giving them, as they went by, 
a vaguely supercilious smile, which the blue 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 213 

jackets returned ; the feeling on each side 
was that they were and would be always 
strangers to one another. To the younger 
of the females alone did the sailors pay any 
attention with some show of gravity, for in 
the human race the senses do not pause 
before the barriers that separate races. 

Upon the whole it was an impression of 
mocking irony, but more still of something 
sinister and terrible, that the men derived 
from their reception in tliis quarter of the 
globe, that had been for centuries forming 
and modeling its frail, yellow denizens, 
with their catlike smile and tread, and 
that was conscious of its power still to go 
on annihilating, with its miasms and its 
torpidity, the race of white men in untold 
numbers. 


XL 


Foe nearly a year now Jean had been 
living in jthat strange land. His cheeks 
had taken on a yellow hue, like those of 
the small feline beings, his neighbors, and 
his muscnlar force had wasted greatly. 

He had tried to work during his unem- 
ployed moments on board the Estoc^ but 
the incessant humid, oppressive heat, which 
continued uninterruptedly by night as well 
as by day, produced a peculiarly debilitat- 
ing fatigue, not only of the body but of 
the mind, and he would remain seated 
before his diagrams and figures for hours 
at a time, incapable of applying himself, 
with a sensation in his brain of utter void 
and emptiness. And the poor little note 
books, reminders of his college days, that 
were constantly becoming less and less ser- 
viceable to him, filled as they were with 
214 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 215 

matter the sense of which eluded his 
apprehension, had begun to assume an 
aspect of great antiquity, owing to the 
inroads of mold, to the attacks of the 
white ants and the legion of infinitesimally 
small creatures that are endowed with 
means of destruction a thousand times 
swifter and more powerful in that land of 
death. 

But an act of highest import in his 
existence had been accomplished finally : 
it was written and dispatched, that letter 
to Madeleine, that for so long a time had 
been the torturing anxiety of his waking 
moments. Little by little the girl’s pretty 
face had come to occupy, almost to the 
exclusion of all else, his tlioughts, now 
dulled and stupefied by the noxious influ- 
ences of the atmosphere. Owing to the 
effect produced on him by solitude and 
nostalgia, he had come to live in such con- 
stant, persistent dreams of France, and 
France with hei% that he had thrown all 
his objections to the winds and made u]3 


216 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

his mind to do the one thing it was possh 
ble for him to do : marry her. 

That the step would have an injurious 
effect upon his future there could be no 
doubt ; it would place difficulties in the 
way of that return to Antibes, which, not- 
withstanding his want of steadiness and 
persistency in carrying out his plan, still 
continued to be his great object in life. 
But, once she was down there in Provence, 
who would ever suspect, beholding her 
walking at his side, so pretty, so graceful, 
with such charming and distinguished 
manners, that she had ever been a working- 
girl, earning her living with her needle ? 

A consideration that had been afflicting 
him for some time was that this return, 
this ineffably blissful dream of revisiting 
Antibes in company with Madeleine and 
his mother, appeared to him as a distant 
probability, which, instead of coming 
nearer, was constantly receding ; of a truth, 
the realization of his dream seemed to be 
becoming more and more problematical ; 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOB 


217 


it appeared as if it were doomed to die a 
lingering deatli beneath all that unfriendly 
verdure, in that air overloaded with per- 
fumes, under that incessant warm rain. 
And one day he suddenly felt himself 
assailed by a sharp pang of anguish — the 
same anguish that he had already before 
experienced, of exile and anaemia, only 
aggravated — at the thought that Madeleine 
was nineteen years old, and that believing, 
as she had doubtless believed for the last 
ten or twelve months, that he had deserted 
her, she might well have bestowed her 
affections on another. And then — presto ! 
he had jumped at the decision that had 
been resting in his mind half -formed since 
he left France — with feverish anxiety to 
catch the mail on the steamer that was 
soon to pass, he had sat down and written 
to his mother and to Madeleine’s father. 

He begged his mother to put herself 
immediately in communication with the 
parents, and request in form for him the 
hand of the object of his love. 


XLI 


And her boy’s letter was so prettily 
affectionate, so irresistibly appealing, that she 
had made haste to comply with his request 
and write, notwithstanding the feeling of 
terror that she experienced at thought of 
that low-born girl arising so unexpectedly 
between her and him, and entailing the 
ruin of all their hopes and irreparable dis- 
grace and loss of caste. 

It is true that the letter which she wrote 
was couched in such terms as a lady uses, 
that is, it was such a letter as those to 
whom it was addressed should consider 
themselves honored by receiving, but the 
main point was that in it she formally 
requested Madeleine’s hand for her son, who 
was expected home in six months’ time. 
After it was dispatched, commencing with 
the following morning, she watched each 
218 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 219 

day with impatient eagerness for the arrival 
of the postman, wishing and ho|)ing in her 
heart of hearts that this Madeleine might 
be married, or have left the country, or 
have died, or done anything that might 
effect a riddance of her. 


XLII 

The following week an answer came, 
written on thin, coarse paper, such as poor 
people use, by the hand of a woman unac- 
customed to hold the pen — the hand of the 
other mother, evidently ; a curt, dry, scorn- 
ful answer, comprising only a few lines. 

Madeleine’s parents believed that they 
remembered something ” of that young man 
who had behaved so disrespectfully toward 
their daughter. But it was as good as set- 
tled that she was to marry a paymaster’s 
clerk in the navy ; she herself didn’t see 
any great objection” to the match, and 
hence it had not been thought best to 
inform her of this new olfer. And in addi- 
tion to that, her means would not allow her 
to marry one no better off than a quarter- 
master. 

And behold, Jean’s mother, instead of 
320 


JEAN BEMNT, SAILOR 221 

experiencing that sensation of gratification 
and delight that she had anticipated from 
a refusal, was not only wounded, but was 
grieved and saddened to the bottom of her 
soul ; that her son, her dearly beloved son, 
should be refused in such terms, when he 
had made the offering of his life ! 

Brooding over the matter as she did 
night and day, she at last came to think 
that she could discern a sort of fatal con- 
nection in all the evil turns with which 
destiny so malignantly persisted in afflict- 
ing her Jean. Was he really of so little 
account, her boy, was he fallen so low, that 
a sewing girl, a daughter of common 
people, should dismiss him thus ? What 
a fall, my God ! what a fall, after the 
dreams of other days, the dreams that she 
and the poor old grandfather, now dead 
and gone, had dreamed over that little 
curly head ! 

Upon a second reading of his letter, 
moreover, she saw that that love of his was 
deeply rooted in his heart, that he would 


222 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

have to suffer profouudly. Should sne 
write aud tell him of his rejection ; should 
she inffict that suffering on him, away out 
there in his distant land of exile ? To 
what purpose, since he was to return so 
soon ? No, she would not do it ; she would 
pretend that the letter containing his 
request had not reached her yet, and when 
she came to write him by the next mail 
would fill the envelope, the last that was 
to bear his address on board the Estoc, 
with whatever other matter she might 
think of, but not this. 

And then, too, other anxieties, that she 
had never known before, presented them- 
selves to swell the discomfort arising from 
that indignity: her Jean had had some 
attacks of the insidious fever of the 
country ; he had not been able to conceal 
the fact from her when he was sent to 
hospital at Hanoi. In the house that she 
lived in at Brest there were other seamen’s 
families, and not very long before she had 
witnessed the home-coming, from those 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 223 

colonies, of two little sailor lads, scarcely 
more than boys, whose letters had not inti- 
mated that they were seriously ill, but 
whose frightful looks seemed to indicate 
that they had not long to live. Never had 
she felt herself so deserted, so alone with 
her distress, that a sentiment of supersti- 
tious terror deterred her from confiding to 
other women who were mothers. Sombre 
forebodings, a chilling, icy gloom descended 
and enwrapped her, like the folds of a 
funeral pall. Pj*ayer ! the thought of it 
occurred to her from time to time, indeed, 
but she could not pray. During her earlier 
years she had been devout ; her faith had 
been ardent, impulsive ; somewhat of the 
Italian nature, somewhat idolatrous, per- 
haps, but to-day that was all past and 
ended, not so much from incredulity as 
from her deep-seated revolt against such an 
accumulation of disaster and ruined hopes. 
Between the Virgin who sat aloft in 
heaven, so calmly indifferent, and herself, 
so wretched and disconsolate on earth, a 


224 jean BEBNT, SAILOR 

veil had been drawn, and all her adoration 
was transferred to her boy. Although she 
had continually before her eyes the two 
holy images that she had brought with her 
from her Provengal home and fastened to 
the wall of her bedchamber, she prayed no 
more. She never crossed the threshold of 
a church, but lived a life of silent suffering 
and revolt, her every faculty concentrated 
in the one single persistent, torturing, 
delicious occupation of waiting. 


XLIII 


And Madeleine, in the little town where 
doubtless her life will continue to run on 
monotonously as ever, will Madeleine, once 
she shall be married to another, quickly 
forget her friend of other days ? 

Or, who can tell, mil she remember? 
in the fleeting succession of those spring- 
times that in the end will rob her of her 
fresh beauty, as she returns to her lowly 
home in the soft May twilight, along those 
streets that wear the same unvarying asjoect, 
through that avenue of lindens as ever 
solitary and deserted, will she remember, 
will she be haunted by the memory of that 
Jean whom she once loved, and by his 
ima2:e, reluctant to vanish from her heart ? 
At the pleasant, tranquil evening hour, in 
the lengthening shadows of the new vernal 

225 


226 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 


growths, will she once again behold his 
shade, leaning against the trunks of those 
trees that are sempiternal ly the same, the 
youthful shade of him she loved ? Who 
shall say ? 


XLIV 


After plowing her way for many a time 
through the hot, muddy water of the river 
and battling against its rapid currents, the 
Estoc was once again at her usual anchorage, 
among the reeds, just off the village in the 
wood. 

And now the time was come when Jean 
was to leave that country. On a still, 
sultry evening, like that evening which 
eighteen months before had witnessed his 
arrival a strong and healthy man, he was 
picking his way with slow and feeble steps 
toward a carriage that stood waiting, sup- 
ported by a brother sailor, turning his 
pallid face in the direction of the gunboat 
to bid farewell with nod and smile to those 
who were to remain. 

Everything reminded him of the evening 
of his landing ; the crepuscular moment 
227 


228 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

was the same, there was the same amazing 
brilliancy of red soil and lustrous foliage, 
the same odors, the same yellow natives, 
who, before vanishing within their huts 
beneath the trees, turned for the last time 
their little enigmatic, oblique eyes on him 
who was departing. In the odorous, humid 
atmosphere, beneath the great oppressive 
trees, life was ever the same, warm and 
languid, entirely different from ours. And 
all those objects that beheld Jean’s depart- 
ure seemed conscious that once more they 
had infused their poison into the system of 
someone from France. 

Of late days, in addition to the stubborn 
fever, that returned with inexorable regu- 
larity at stated intervals, dysentery had 
set in and at once assumed its gravest 
aspect. This is a disease whose course can 
never be predicted Avith any certainty; 
sometimes it selects the strong for its vic- 
tims and passes by the feeble, and again 
the converse is the case ; sometimes it fin- 
ishes its murderous work in a feAV weeks. 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 229 

sometimes in many years. Some return to 
France who, to all appearances, have es- 
caped scot free, but the insidious malady 
is all the time gnawing at their vitals, and 
at the end of ten years, or it may be twenty, 
makes an end of them ; while others, with 
far less power of resistance, on whom the 
disease seems to have taken a much stronger 
hold, recover, no one can tell why. 

Two of the young men who sailed from 
France with Jean had died before the first 
year was ended. He was leaving the 
country a very sick man, his features drawn 
and pinched, the skin of his face like 
parchment ; the slightest efibrt, even the 
attempt to walk a few steps, would bring 
the perspiration in streams from his limbs 
and body. 

And occasionally, at his moments of 
awakening, he had the impression — which 
did not remain long with him, it is true — 
that his return had been too long delayed. 


XLV 

At Saigon they found a number of 
soldiers and sailors of the local station who 
had completed their time and were await- 
ing an opportunity of returning to their 
native land, and, in addition, the entire 
ship’s company of the Circe ^ that had had 
her armament removed and was to be 
anchored permanently in the stream. 
Through motives of economy all these 
people were crowded on board the Saone, 
an old-time sailing vessel altered to a 
steamer, that was to return to France by 
the longer way around the Cape of Good 
Hope. 

That be might be spared the passage of 
the Red Sea, with its terrible debilitating 
heat, Jean had asked and obtained permis- 
sion to sail on board the Sabne^ where he 
would also have the benefit of the company 
230 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 231 

of Le Marec, Joal, Kerblioulis, all his old 
friends and messmates of the liesolue and 
the Circe, 

These men, too, had suffered to some 
extent from the same comj)laint as Jean, 
but far less than he, and there was now 
scarcely a trace of it left on them. This was 
accounted for by the fact that for the last 
eighteen months they had been serving at 
sea, while he, whose duties confined him to 
the streams and swamps of the interior, 
had been constantly compelled to inhale 
the poisonous exhalations of the rank vege- 
tation. 


XLVI 

The sea air was at first beneficial, and 
hope returned to him. As long as they 
continued to have the trade winds of the 
northern hemisphere with them he could 
remain on deck, seated in the shade, inhal- 
ing deep draughts of the rejuvenating 
breeze, watching the handling of the ship 
and chatting with his friends. 

But not many days elapsed before they 
entered the equatorial regions, with their 
oppressive calms, enervating humidity and 
drenching rains. Then, notwithstanding 
all the tender care of which he was the 
object, there ensued a sudden prostration 
which obliged him to take to his cot and 
remain below in the ship’s hospital. 

In the beginning his feeling was that of 
the mingled stupefaction and incredulity 
233 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 233 

wliich is experienced by the very young 
and very strong, who ahvays refuse to ad- 
mit in their own case the possibility of the 
malady terminating fatally. While at his 
post on board the Estoc it had seemed to 
him that, once he was out of that Chinese 
sweat-box, a few whiffs of bracing sea air 
and the pleasant thought of being home- 
ward bound would suffice to make him a 
well man. Could it really be that his 
return had been too long delayed ! 

Mo)i Dieu^ how sluggishly they crept 
along, how persistently those everlasting 
calms held on! Would the breeze never 
spring up, would they never light the fur- 
nace fires and start the engines ! 

And on waking one day in the afternoon, 
heavier of head and more anguished at 
heart than usual, from an unrefreshing 
slumber, the truth presented itself to him 
in all its appalling nakedness ; he saw how 
it was with him, and with the knowledge 
came a spasm of horror and dismay, as if 
before him he had beheld a fathomless 


234 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

abyss of night and blackness into which he 
was on the point of falling — 

His old comrades of the Resohte often 
came and sat by his bedside, especially Le 
Marec and Joal, who devoted to him every 
moment that they could snatch from their 
duties. He loved them both tenderly, he 
thanked them, and would sometimes display 
an interest in their attempts to cheer him ; 
and it seemed to him that they brought with 
them in their coarse garments a wholesome 
breath of the fresh air above. But how 
little did ties like these count for as the 
great end drew near ! Ah, no ; it w^as the 
mother in whom all love and affection 
centred, who was all in all to him ; his 
mother, upon whom he was ever calling 
from the depths of his soul, and for whom 
he yearned despairingly. 

And still no sign of a breeze ! Still the 
dead calm and the stifling hot, damp 
atmosphere in which his strength was 
wasting, wasting, as in a Turkish bath too 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 235 

long protracted. And at liis side were 
other patients, gradually sinking, little 
soldiers, mere boys not over twenty, con- 
sumed with dysentery, with ashen faces 
and frames of skeletons. And to these 
sick men it seemed as if their torment was 
to be protracted to infinity, rocking thus 
idly on the broad bosom of the ocean, ad- 
vancing no step toward home. 


XLVII 


On the tenth day, however, in the early 
morning hours, this stagnant condition of 
affairs commenced to end. 

A breeze sprang up, so faint at first as 
barely to be perceptible, but freshening con- 
stantly, and before it, in a sky less like a 
brazier, more like our own, a bevy of small 
fleecy, pearl-tinted clouds scudded merrily. 
It was warm, this breeze, but possessed 
such invigorating qualities that it seemed 
cool; through the long wind sails, whose 
mouths yawned to receive it, it swept down- 
ward even to the depths of the ship’s hold, 
to the sick bay filled with feverish emana- 
tions, where the patients received it with a 
sensation of delicious comfort and well- 
being. It was the southern trade Avind, and 
the sky was the unvarying sky of the 
tropics ; the Saone had entered those regions 


JEAN BEMNY, SAILOR 237 

that know no change, and henceforth the 
same unfailing wind would urge her on- 
ward, night and day, toward the Cape. 

Stretched on his cot away at the bottom 
of the ship, Jean was conscious of all that 
was happening above in the air and sun- 
shine. The boatswain’s silver whistle, that 
had been silent all through those long, 
oppressive days, now piped its cheeriest 
strains, and the sick man’s ear, more alert in 
inactivity, caught the ringing sounds, now 
short and sharp, again drawn out in linger- 
ing accents, or modulated in birdlike trills 
and quavers ; he seized the meaning of each 
different signal as easily as he would have 
read a book writ in a familiar language ; 
he divined all that was going on aloft upon 
the great masts and yards, and could have 
told the name of each separate bit of can- 
vas as it was set to catch the favoring gale. 
Their speed increased with every hour, and 
everything and everybody seemed pervaded 
by a sense of lightness ; even the water of 
the sea seemed lighter, that water that is 


238 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


oftentimes so dense and heavy when the 
wind is adverse and there is a head sea on ; 
to-day, ship, wind and sea were all running 
-in the same direction, and now, instead of 
the great ugly waves that had often dashed 
like a battering ram against the frail walls 
of the sick bay, all that Jean heard was 
the ripple of the glancing water, the plash 
of the flying spray. Besides the positive 
physical comfort that this beneflcent wind 
brought to those poor exhausted invalids, 
it also inspired them with hope, and as the 
Saone threw out sail upon sail to the breeze 
Jean’s eyes, dreamily fixed on visions of 
distant France, recovered almost completely 
the expression of life that they had lost. 
Oh, how good it was to be speeding on- 
ward thus ! Oh, let them hasten, quick, 
quick ! let them fly like a bird across 
that watery waste, whose terrible immen- 
sity was keeping him from his mother. If 
but the numbered tale of his days could be 
prolonged a little ; if he could but live six 
or seven weeks more in that friendlier air 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 239 

that was already restoring to him his 
strength ! — 7non one can never tell, 

with these strange complaints, that often 
last longer than one thinks. Only six or 
seven weeks more, and they would be at 
their voyage’s end ! And it came to appear 
to him more and more a possibility, almost 
a certainty, indeed, that he was again to 
behold their poor abode at Brest, that he 
loved now with all his heart, and to clasp 
his mother in his arms, and have her at his 
bedside to hold his hands in hers at the 
last, dread hour. 

As evening was descending, at that 
pleasant moment succeeding the setting of 
the sun, an irresistible impulse seized him ; 
he felt better, ever so much better, and so 
from his sick-bed he arose to go and mingle 
with the living who were up there on deck, 
breathing the pure, cool air ; having bathed 
his face in cold water and put on a clean 
suit of duck, he started on his upward 
journey, dragging himself laboriously up 


240 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

the long ladders, like a phantom in the 
semi-darkness. His great strength, that 
had been his sole terrestrial possession, had 
deserted him ; still, in the stout topman’s 
arms, where the muscles had stood out in 
great knots and bunches once, there was 
a remnant of pith that disease had not 
destroyed entirely, and he used it to hoist 
himself up, hanging on grimly to each 
round of the ladder, while his legs, first to 
give out, weakened under the weight of 
his body. 

At last his head emerged into the open 
air. As if arising from the tomb he gazed 
around him, feasting his charmed eyes with 
the view of surrounding space, the belly- 
ing sails, the deep sky in which the stars 
were beginning to appear. 

The Saone was flying like some great 
white-winged bird of night* before the 
austral trade wind. The good ship, speed- 
ing onward and restoring vanished hopes ! 
And as Jean raised his head above the 
companionway, the first breath of welcome 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 241 

air that reached him also brought to his 
ears a joyful and familiar sound: a song 
that, barely audible below, up there seemed 
suddenly to swell and burst in triumphant 
salutation of his re-appearance among his 
brother sailors. It was, as ever, the inevi- 
table ‘^Old Neptune,” the same old light, 
catchy chorus that had been sung over and 
over again at the same evening hour. And 
the Saone went pressing onward into the 
infinite solitu^^e of silence, that was scarcely 
disturbed by the gentle ripple of the water 
beneath her bow, scattering upon the still- 
ness of the night the joyous sounds, leaving 
behind her a trailing wake of melody, that 
was lost and wasted for that there was no 
ear to hear it. 

When Jean’s eyes, long unaccustomed to 
the spectacle, had renewed acquaintance 
with the immensity of sea and sky, they 
turned to the towering edifice of canvas 
that, spread to catch every breath of wind, 
was urging the vessel onward upon her 
course: a tall, fantastic structure, snow- 


242 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

white against the diaphanous blue of night, 
that seemed to fill the whole expanse of 
air and pierce the heavens with its unstable 
fabric, unreal and unsubstantial as a vision. 
White, too, were the singers in their linen 
garments ; some stretched on the white 
planks in every attitude of repose and 
well-being, others grouped in form of pyra- 
mid on the ship’s boats that occupied the 
central portion of the deck, and others 
still, higher and more distant, clustered on 
the bridge. “ Old Neptune, Monarch of 
the Seas,” sang the choristers, motionlessly 
reclining in the starry splendor of the 
night. The sprightly i*efrain of the song 
returned incessantly, taken up nonchal- 
antly, as in a semi-slumberous state, by 
fresh young vibrating voices, so modulated 
as not to dissipate a pleasant dream. And 
all this edifice of white sails and men in 
white pressed onward, careening and bow- 
ing gently to the breeze, like some fantas- 
tic thing soon to be swallowed up in dark- 
ness; pressed onward ever, quicker and 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 243 

more quickly still, racing, flying through 
the transparent night, with soothing, softly 
swaying motion, and occasionally a little 
bump, like a universally pervasive thrill 
joy. 

The poor fugitive from below decks, 
upon whom Death had already laid his 
Anger, wondered at this display of fairy- 
land, so long unseen by him as almost to 
be forgotten. All that made a sailor’s life 
so entrancing to him, all that he loved so 
in his profession, was on this last, supreme 
occasion displayed with the utmost of 
spectacular effect before his eyes, that soon 
would see no more. Charmed and dazzled, 
with an ardent longing that he might live 
as long as they, the young comrades who 
surrounded him, he came forward, very 
weak, his strength all gone, with a dizzi- 
ness that became more pronounced at each 
succeeding moment, seeking among all those 
white forms the friendly group where Marec 
and Joal were, that he might once again, as 
of old, take his place among them. 


244 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

They were there, close at hand, and 
because they had recognized him they 
hushed their song ; they looked upon his 
face, where a brief time had wrought such 
a startling change, where the pallor and 
emaciation were even more strongly 
marked in the dim vague light of even- 
ing. 

“ Oh, it is you, my boy ! ” said Marec — 
one of those elderly personages who play 
the part of heavy father on shipboard, who 
assume patronizing airs by reason of their 
massive scpiareness of build and sun -burnt 
faces, and whose age may range anywhere 
between thirty and thirty-five. 

Make room there, you fellows ; make 
room for Berny.” 

Around him silence reigned while his 
friends were arranging a little nook where 
he might be comfortable, but a few steps 
away the chorus went on uninterruptedly, 
with unabated spirit and the same careless, 
insouciant swing. A piece of sailcloth was 
brought and folded twice across as a pro- 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 245 

tection for his wasted limbs against tlie 
hard planks, and he yielded himself pas- 
sively to the arms that were extended to 
assist him, for his strength had entirely 
deserted him, and he was conscious of a 
sort of trembling sensation coming over 
him, an evil and sinister presage. 

Lean on me,” “ Here’s a cushion for 
you,” said those nearest him, offering 
their breast or shoulder as a support for 
the death-stricken man. And when they 
had assured his comfort they struck into 
Old ISTeptune ” again, coming in on the 
refrain, and Jean found himself in the 
midst of the tuneful band, experiencing 
a momentary sensation of comfort — or 
rather of diminished suffering — by reason 
of his recumbent position. With head 
thrown back and half-closed eyes, his 
delighted gaze took in the entire fairy- 
like display, from the trucks of the tall 
masts down to the snowy deck. Eocked 
lazily by the slow, uniform motion of the 
gentle swells, those groups of humanity. 


246 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

motionless and white as statues of marble, 
were painted on the dim blue curtain of 
the night with the vague indistinctness of 
figures in a dream, and against the sky, 
decked with the blazing jewels of the 
southern constellations, were outlined the 
lofty masts and phantom-like white sails, 
that, as they swayed under the impulse 
of the ever-freshening breeze, described 
with their summits wider arcs among the 
stars, but swayed so gently and with a 
movement so regular and uniform that one 
might have thought it was the heavenly 
bodies that had suddenly lost their immo- 
bility and were performing a stately minuet 
on high. And all the time the singers 
were casting to the bland wind their clear 
sparkling notes, that seemed to fiy away 
on wings. In the midst of this transpar- 
ency, for which there was no name, the 
transparency of night without its obscurity, 
that vessel, careening under her cloud of 
canvas, her deck filled with all those 
motionless white mariners, ceased to have 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


247 


the aspect of reality. The music, that con- 
tinuous monotone of fresh young voices, 
soothing as a lullaby, and the uninterrupted 
gentle oscillatory motion communicated to 
all, and their flight, rapid and easy as a 
bird’s, all served to add to and intensify 
the impression of immateriality that was 
conveyed by things visible and tangible. 
The whole display might have been taken 
for some unsubstantial, melodious pageant 
that the trade wind was urging onward to 
some non-existent haven, in those limitless, 
shoreless regions, the realm of the inflnitely 
void. 

But not for long did Jean continue to 
behold the magic spectacle that filled his 
already enfeebled brain with wonder. The 
delicious coolness of the night, that to the 
others brought health and strengtli, in him 
only served to hasten the process of mortal 
disorganization. A vague feeling of dis- 
comfort began to manifest itself in his chest, 
limbs and bowels, and developed rapidly 
into acute pain. Then his legs and arms 


248 JEAN BEENY, SAILOR 

became heavy as lead and lost their power 
of movement, as in one who had remained 
too long in a constrained position, and the 
sensation spread, and kept spreading, first 
to the loins, then to the chest and larynx. 
It was like a slow, progressive death, ascend- 
ing gradually toward the head, that was 
lucid still and retained its faculty of thought. 
It reached his lips, and they contracted 
spasmodically, and when he would have 
called for assistance on his friends, who had 
not ceased their song, his tight-locked mouth 
would not respond: the only sound he 
could give utterance to was an inarticulate 
moan, distressful to hear. 

The sailors were alarmed by that sinister 
cry, which seemed to be wrested from the 
very depths of his being. Marec, bend- 
ing tenderly over him, saw the writhing 
contraction of the lips and the look of sup- 
plication in his eyes. Then with infinite 
precaution and the affectionate words of 
loving brothers, three of them took him in 
their strong arms, bore him down the lad- 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 249 

der, and laid him on his bed. And now, 
unconscious of all that was going on around 
him, helpless as a little child, he lay in the 
warm infirmary, that on shipboard was 
called the death trap.” 


XLVIII 


He did not die that night, however. 
Down below, in the death trap,” the doc- 
tor brought him back to life. 

For several days he lived with scarcely 
any other companions than his thoughts, 
moments of hope alternating with others of 
chill despair at the prospect of his solitary 
death. He observed the doctor’s direc. 
tions with scrupulous care, in the one sole 
thought that had come to dominate him 
more and more, to last long enough to see 
his mother once again. Each day there 
was to be seen lying on his bed a poor pit- 
iful letter that he had begun to write her ; 
a letter of farewell that he had commenced 
when the fever was on him, and into which 
he infused all his soul ; then exhaustion 
would supervene and compel him to lay 
down the pen, and afterward, in a moment 


JEAN BEB^Y, SAILOB 251 

of returning hope or of determination not 
to die, he would tear the sheet in frag- 
ments. His chest — a box of white pine, 
such as all sailors own — stood at his bed’s 
head, containing many precious little ob- 
jects, the thought of abandoning which 
grieved him inexpressibly : portraits and 
letters of that mother whom he so yearned 
to see once more, many of them very old 
and yellow with age, most of them having 
some connection with circumstances more 
or less memorable of their past ; and there 
were also two of the note-books of his old 
college days, in which, on an evening when 
the sunshine and his dreams alike were 
bright, he had inscribed the date when 
he became an eligible candidate for the 
Borda. 

He suffered little, but was terribly weak, 
with a growing weakness for which there 
was no remedy. His fitful slumbers were 
disturbed by dreams, and he would awake 
to find himself lying drenched in a cold 
night sweat. Evidences of approaching dis- 


252 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

solution had begun to manifest themselves 
in his brain : pitiable hallucinations, delus- 
ive ideas, and affections of boyhood that 
returned to mock him. His thoughts re- 
verted constantly to matters connected with 
the beginning of his life, and he recalled 
them with a morbid fidelity and intensity 
that was almost like second sight. On the 
other hand, images of women and of love 
had ceased to trouble him ; for some inscru- 
table reason, doubtless a physical one diffi- 
cult of explanation, these images had been 
the first to die, in his memory that was also 
about to perish. Forgotten now was that 
young maid of Khodes, who, every evening 
during one bright month of June, had come 
down the hills to meet him at the old 
deserted harbor, attracted by the velvety 
softness of his young eyes ; forgotten, the 
fair Canadian, who for a time had made 
very dear to him a certain lonely street in 
the outskirts of Quebec ; forgotten, all for- 
gotten. Of Madeleine alone did he think 
occasionally, because for her his love had 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 253 

been of a more complex nature, more closely 
associated with the mystery of that inner 
human entity which we call the soul ; he 
had glimpses still of her pale face and ar- 
dent, deep-set young eyes, or seemed to 
hear the sound of her timid voice in mur- 
mured conversation at the twilight hour, 
under the flowering lindens, beneath the 
ne^v-born leaves on which came pattering 
down the warm rain of an April evening. 
But he did not linger on the picture long, 
turning from it to his mother, to his loved 
sunny land of Provence, to his own child- 
hood’s days — and especially to the days of 
his first assuming man’s attire, of the little 
brown hat with the velvet ribbon. And 
unspeakable grief and despair would wring 
his heart at the sudden thought that never, 
never again would his eyes behold certain 
localities in that country, certain things 
pertaining to that time — at the thought, for 
instance, that he should nevermore tread 
a certain path, at a bend in which he and 
his mother had sat down to rest beneath 


254 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


tlie pines, on a Sunday evening, in the 
springtime, long ago. 

He will last until the cold weather 
comes,” the doctor said. And he was 
right ; the trade wind, that blew^ through 
the open hatches and down the wind sail, 
the warm, soft trade, that varied not by 
day or night, held him in a stationary con- 
dition. 


XLIX 

But one evening an immense, dirty-look- 
ing gray cloud rose above tbe southern 
liorizou, and, creeping up the heavens, soon 
formed an impenetrable vault of blackness 
over all. And the wind that had so long 
favored them died away, and in the air, 
that suddenly became chill and piercing, 
two great albatrosses, the first they had 
seen, appeared — denizens of the sombre 
austral land. In the fading light and in 
the penetrating mist that descended and 
enwrapjDed the men as in an icy mantle, it 
was too dangerous a business to attempt at 
nightfall to penetrate further into those ill- 
known seas, overspread by that dense veil 
of clouds, and where everything was to 
be feared from the fickle and uncertain 
weather. 


255 


256 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

The next morning the entire aspect of 
things was changed on board the Sabne^ on 
which the sun had ceased to shine. Straw 
hats were replaced by old fatigue caps, 
that were pulled well down to protect the 
ears; the spruce uniforms of clean white 
duck were discarded for old blue woolen 
suits, worn and faded, which showed that 
the industrious moth and voracious cock- 
roach had been at work on them. On 
deck there were signs of great activity 
among the watch whose turn of duty it 
was. Brand new sails were coming up 
from below, folded in long cylindrical 
bundles and supported on the shoulders of 
w^avering, staggering rows of men. Cables 
of a tawny color, new, like the sails, and 
redolent of tar, were taken from the hold. 
As they were released from the coils a gang 
of sailors would seize the free end, and, 
starting on a run, snake ” them the ship’s 
length, like endless serpents. Everything 
was done to the sound of the boatswain’s 
whistle, and the shrill calls, trills and 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 257 

quavers resounded unintermittently on tlie 
sharper air, which was beneficial to sound 
lungs, but mortal to weaker ones. Pre- 
parations were being made for the coming 
conflict with wind and waves in that inhos- 
pitable, treacherous zone. 

The two albatrosses came very near, 
wheeling in wide circles around the ship ; 
they were the same that had appeared the 
night before, and likely as not would con- 
tinue for weeks to follow in the vessel’s 
wake ; and they maintained an incessant 
scream in their vile, raucous voice, which 
resembles nothing so much as the creaking 
of a rusty weathercock or unoiled pulley. 
And the quartermaster at the wheel, not 
appreciating their lugubrious music, shook 
his fist at the birds and addressed them 
thus : 

“ I say there, you two great dirty spar- 
rows over yonder, don’t you think you 
might as well grease your pulley a 
bit.” 

The truth was that the two albatrosses 


258 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

seemed to him to be singing someone’s 
death song. 

The gale was prompt with its onset, 
commencing hostilities before the prepara- 
tions for defense were comjdeted. By the 
evening of the second day the fearful 
bellowing of the storm filled the air with 
its all-powerful voice and the din was 
deafening. The waves reared their mighty 
crests and came forward to the attack 
in long, serried line of battle. And the 
sailors were aloft in the rigging or out on 
the plunging yards, performing their duties, 
so fraught with danger. The poor rough, 
horny hands and the stubby nails worn 
down to the quick rasped and scraped on 
the refractory, water-soaked canvas as they 
gathered in the slack of the topsails, that 
were all reduced to a single reef. And 
faces took on a deeper shade of purple 
under the influence of the stinging cold, 
to which they had so long been unaccus- 
tomed. 

In the death trap,” that was kept her- 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 259 

metically closed, tlie motion was painfully 
apparent to the patients as the ship alter- 
nately climbed laboriously to the summit 
of some huge wave and then slid off with 
frightful velocity into the depths of the 
succeeding valley ; the two men who had 
been so ill were released from their suffer- 
ing on the following night. 

Jean appeared to be in the last extrem- 
ity of fever, but he continued to live on, 
with alternations of wild delirium and 
deepest prostration, in which his reduced 
pulse and scarcely perceptible breathing 
counterfeited death. 

Oh, that letter, the letter for his mother, 
which he had not written ! That was now 
his all-engrossing preoccupation, not very 
clearly defined at times, but always present 
to his mind, even in slumber — and so 
piteous, so pathetic ! In his moments 
between sleeping and waking he con- 
stantly imagined that he was writing to 
her ; it seemed to him he could see a sheet 
of paper on the bed, the pen held in his 


260 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

fingers, and the characters traced by bis 
band, telling ber of bis distress and bidding 
ber farewell. And then, awaking with a 
start, be would see that it was all a delusion 
of bis senses, that bis band was banging, 
heavy and inert, at bis bedside, that there 
was no sheet traced with written characters 
before him on bis counterpane. Then in 
bis despair be would toss himself violently 
about upon bis cot, beseeching the attend- 
ants to give him writing materials. They 
answered him as little children are an- 
swered : 

“Yes, yes; pretty soon, in a few 
moments. As soon as the fever goes down 
a little you shall have your inkstand and 
your box.” 

And the nurses exchanged a sorrowful 
look of compassion. What they did not 
tell him was that, in one of the ship’s more 
violent lurches, bis precious box bad rolled 
to the deck and been dashed in pieces, at 
the same instant that a great wave came 
on board, carr3dng all before it and fiooding 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 261 

every compartment of the vessel ; and that 
the beloved objects, saturated with water 
of the ocean and fetid bilgewater, were 
nothing but a pitiful mass of pulp : letters, 
portraits, and the poor note-books of the 
schoolboy, between whose pages rested, 
buried forever in oblivion now, his cher- 
ished hopes of admission to the Bor da. 

Poor child, whom nature had destined 
for a life of insouciance and perennial 
youth, for love and dreamy reverie, for joy- 
ous health and the bright smile of gladness, 
he preserved to the end that boyishness 
which had been his charm, and also his 
curse. And yet at certain moments he was 
one of those seers whose gift of second 
sight enables them to look into futurity 
and read the frightful secrets of the infinite. 
But it was as a child, with childish revolts 
and incredulity and wonder, that he was to 
face the conqueror. Death ; longing above 
all else to have his mother by to soothe 
him with her presence. His soul went out 
to her in ineffable impulses of tenderness. 


262 


JEAN BERN7, SAILOR 


lie had a sensation of heartfelt remorse for 
having at times been somewhat forgetful of 
her, for having sometimes caused her to 
suffer in those days when life was exuber- 
ant within him. Ah, the sweet letters of 
tears and penitence that he had in mind to 
write her! In the heyond, the hereafter^ 
he placed no belief, for in this respect, as in 
so many others, he was a sailor. Seamen 
are not atheists ; they jiray, they make 
offerings to the Virgin and the saints, but 
with puerile inconsistency they seldom be- 
lieve in the existence of their own soul 
beyond this life. And he, too, prayed, in 
a confused way, and his crude but ardent 
prayers only asked that his body might 
not be surrendered to the deep, that he 
might be permitted to live yet for a brief 
while, that it might he granted him to 
die in a certain poor bedchamber, in a cer- 
tain bed covered with a knitted counter- 
pane, at the side of which should be a face 
gentler than all faces upon earth, en- 
framed in bands of soft gray hair. Oh, 


JEAN BEENY, SAILOR 263 

that it were God’s will that in the cemetery 
of Brest, where soon they would be 
now, he might have a grave at which his 
mother would come and kneel ! And it 
might even be that, when the crew were 
paid off, the money coming to him would 
be sufficient to transfer his body to dear 
Provence and give it sepulture in the soil 
of his native land. But no, it was not to 
be ; he felt that life was leaving him too 
fast and the sea was to be his grave, and 
his eyes dilated with horror at the thought 
that before many days his earthly remains 
would be hurled, wrapped in a shroud of 
sailcloth, down, down through the meas- 
ureless depths of the dark waste that lay 
below. 

At last the final agony set in; it was 
bitter and protracted, but the mental part 
of him had no share in it ; it was wholly 
material. And on the fourth day of the 
storm, amid the fury of the raging, un- 
chained elements, when the gale was at its 
height and its uproar filled the heavens. 


264 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

death came to him, almost unnoticed by 
his brother sailors, to whom self-pres- 
ervation was the ruling instinct for the 
time being, in those hours of toil and 
danger. 


L 


He was committed to tlie deep, and his 
immersal passed as a thing of minor con- 
sequence. 

At break of day on a dark, forbidding 
morning his remains, sewed in an envelope 
of coarse duck, were laboriously dragged 
up the long ladders to the deck by two 
men, who held their grisly burden by the 
neck. “What has he with him in the 
sack ? ” one of them asked ; “ books ? ” 
It was the note-books of the Borda, his 
mother’s letters, the lid and broken frag- 
ments of the box, everything that had been 
his. The man who sewed him in his 
shroud — a humble soul, who had never 
learned to read — had piously placed with 
him, in his coarse winding sheet, all that 
remained of the things which were so dear 
to him. With great difficulty, on account 
265 


266 JEAN BEBNY, 'SAILOE 

of the laboring of the vessel, they suc- 
ceeded in getting him np the ladder, where, 
with a brutality that could not be avoided, 
his unsentient head from time to time 
bumped against the projecting angles of 
the woodwork. By a liatchAvay, that was 
opened furtively a little space to give him 
passage, he was delivered to other w^aiting 
hands, that raised him to the deck. 

In the heavy weather then prevailing 
the chaplain, an aged and ailing man, Avas 
unable to leave his stateroom to conduct 
the burial service, and the Avave-Avashed 
deck Avas deserted, save for the Avatch and 
the men detailed to conduct their com- 
rade’s funeral. 

The ship made a more violent plunge 
than usual, and just at that moment they 
launched the body into one of those yawn- 
ing AA^atery chasms that open and close 
again immediately. A great Avave, topped 
with a fringe of foam, came up and dashed 
it against the ship’s quarter Avith a force 
sufficient to grind all the bones to poAvder; 


JEAN BEENT, SAILOB ■ 267 

then it vanished from mortal vision, plung- 
ing swiftly downward into the realm of 
silence and unending night, commencing 
its infinite descent into the unfathomed 
depths below 


LI 

Almost immediately, as if by magic, the 
weather changed. The rage and fury of 
the elements began to subside, as they had 
arisen, without apparent cause. The waves, 
with an air of weariness and lassitude after 
the conflict, went tumbling over one an- 
other as they scurried away in disorder, 
their violence neutralized by the effect of a 
storm of more ancient date that had been 
raging in some distant region. 

The two albatrosses, that had remained 
invisible as long as the gale lasted, now 
showed themselves again, accompanied by 
a retinue of cape-pigeons and gray petrels, 
that in squawking, unmelodious accents 
proclaimed their insatiable hunger. 

And the wind went down ; it began to 
be possible to converse without raising the 
voice to a scream ; the routine of the ship 
268 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 269 

resumed something of its usual course in 
the comparative tranquillity, and the covers 
of the hatches were removed. 

In the afternoon, the wind still continu- 
ing to fall, order was again established in 
almost every quarter of tho ship. The 
Saoiie once more spread her snow-white 
wings, which had been folded with such 
difficulty and danger, and the sailors found 
time to think of him who had departed 
amid the crash and uproar of the elements. 
Jean’s friends began to reflect with feelings 
of sorrow and sadness on their loss. And 
at length came the peaceful evening hour, 
the hour when the crew is mustered for 
prayei*. 

At the usual order, given by the officer 
of the watch in a curt, abstracted tone, the 
bugle sounded. Eesponsive to the sound 
two hundred seamen came streaming up 
from below, like a rising tide, through the 
narrow companionways, and formed in 
line upon the deck. A hundre'd to star- 
board, a hundred to port, forming two 


270 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOE 


wavering, shuffling masses of humanity 
that undulated like a flock of sheep ; me- 
chanically they fell into line along those 
low, flimsy bulwarks which alone sepa- 
rated them from the ravening sea. They 
were crowded so that their shoulders inter- 
locked, crowded like cattle on that frail 
refuge of planks that they called the SaonOy 
and their crowding had in it something 
unutterably pitiful, that spoke of man’s 
littleness in the midst of that infinite ex- 
panse of sea and sky, in that debauch of 
space that was around them on every side, 
and where, in the roar of the weaves, in 
the cry of the sea-birds, in everything, 
spoke the voice of mighty Death, the 
conquerer. 

The chaplain had also come on deck in 
his black gown that fluttered in the wind. 
And the offlcer in command, in the same 
sharp, peremptory tone that he had em- 
ployed in giving the other necessary com- 
mands, now ordered: ‘^Prayers!” but 
yet with more of feeling in his voice, be- 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


271 


cause, perhaps, there arose in him a memory 
of the poor fellows whose names would no 
longer be carried on the ship’s muster-roll, 
and of him who had that very morning 
been offered as a sacrifice to greedy ocean. 

“ Prayers ! ” The ship’s bugler, once 
more distending his cheeks and the veins 
of his neck, as he had done so many times 
before, gave to the surrounding outer void 
that short, staccato call that each evening 
summons poor Jack to come and say his 
Pater and Ave Maria. Loud and clear 
the brazen notes rang out, on this occa- 
sion with a strange, unusual tone, over the 
wild waste of angry water. And the call 
seemed somehow like an appeal to a 
power that was very far away, or non- 
existent, before which their supplications 
were to be laid for form’s sake, hopelessly. 

“ Prayers ! ” At the command two hun- 
dred calloused hands were swiftly raised 
to two hundred woolen caps, which fell 
with a simultaneous motion to their owners’ 
side, and every man was silent and motion- 


272 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

less. And the two hundred young heads 
appeared to view, divested of their cover- 
ing, close-clipped, blond for the most part, 
shining with bright reflections in the fading 
light of evening; the brawny shoulders, 
their contours visible under the well-worn 
jackets, were closely pressed together in a 
homogeneous mass and swayed with a 
gentle motion in unison with the rolling of 
the ship. 

Our Father, which art in Heaven,” the 
priest began in a voice that trembled 
slightly and had not its usual impassive 
steadiness. And thereat two or three of 
the younger and more childlike among the 
crew raised their eyes confidingly to that 
heaven of which the good man spoke. 
Night was beginning to draw her veil of 
darkness over it, and around them, while 
the recitation of the Pater still went on, 
the petrels and albatrosses, scavengers of 
the deep, lingered in the twilight, wheeling 
in wide circles with the same hoarse cries, 
chanting, in concert with wind and ocean, 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 273 

tlie chant of the great transformer of our 
being, the chant of mighty Death. 

Most of the seamen had mechanically 
turned their eyes on the black-gowned man 
while he was praying, and now that their 
faces were no longer animated by the care- 
less smile, it was easy to read in them their 
long inheritance of toil and poverty. All 
those young countenances, so hardy and 
vigorous, wore an aspect of hardness and 
materialism that was intensified by the 
fatigue of their laborious day, with an inde- 
scribable expression of humble resignation 
and passive endurance ; among the Bretons, 
whose numbers predominated, traces of 
their primitive semi-barbarism were mani- 
fest. It was -in the eyes alone, which, as 
they were bent on the priest, it could be 
seen still preserved the trustful candor 
of boyhood, that here and there was indi- 
cated some tendency of their owner toward 
things spiritual, toward some legendary 
paradise, some indeterminate, vague notion 
of eternity; but there were others that 


274 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 


emitted no light from within, that merely 
reflected the aspects of external nature, 
whose owners paused at the most rudiment- 
ary conceptions, scarce higher than the con- 
fused dreams of animals. 

I salute thee, Mary full of grace ; thou 
art blessed above all women, and Jesus, 

the fruit of thy womb is blessed ” 

His accent was slower and his intonation 
more broken as he recited the ancient 
prayer ; at the same time those great 
children who were listening to his words 
began to manifest a sort of shame-faced 
sorrow as Jean’s memory rose to their 
minds; those who had known and loved 
him evinced a grief that was deep and 
sincei’e, while in the little group where 
were Joal and Marec, who had buried him, 
every eye was moist. Over the heads of 
all the men who stood there in line hovered, 
for the last time, the spirit of him who had 
that morning been committed to the dark 
green depths of ocean. 

“ Holy Mary, motlier of God, pray for 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 275 

US ” The most inattentive lent an ear 

to these words, that they had heard a 
hundred times before, which now appeared 
fraught with new significance. And when 
the chaplain, after a preliminary pause and 
speaking in a tone of yet deeper solemnity, 
uttered these last words, so sublime in 
their simplicity : — for us, poor sinners — 

now — and in our hour of death,” quick- 
coming tears sprang to the eyes of two or 
three among the listening men and rolled 
down their cheeks, like a refreshing shower 
of rain. 

‘^Amen!” The young blond heads all 
bent as when a field of grain is rippled 
by a passing breeze, a few hands weire 
swiftly raised to breasts and foreheads, and 
all was over ; the wind freshened with tlu^ 
approach of night, and men began to sling 
their hammocks amid an uproar of jestfj 
and laughter, and thoughtless gayety 
reigned again on board. Prayer and 
thoughts of death seemed to be left behind 
in the immense, ever-changing void that 


276 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

was constantly receding in the distance. 
On that vessel where his comrades had 
beheld him die Jean’s image was already 
grown pale and indistinct, suddenly thrust 
away into the darkest corner of men’s 
memory. In their exuberance of animal 
life those young beings were quick to 
forget. 

Out of respect to him there was no sing- 
ing that night, but the next day the song 
“ Old Neptune,” started at first by a few 
voices, was soon taken up and sung in 
chorus. And as if all on board were as it 
had been, the Sabne pursued her long and 
weary way toward France. 


LII 

It was a month later, on one of those 
April days, made up of showers and sun- 
shine and in which the cold of winter lingers 
still, that are so common in Brittany, when 
the good ship came to anchor in the harbor 
of Brest, where the anxious mother was 
watching for her arrival. 

There had been no further sickness on 
board. After Jean, indeed, three other 
unfortunates had been consigned to a grave 
in the infinite waste of water, but that 
was away down in the southern hemi- 
sphere, in those distant regions where the 
albatross wings its solitary flight. The 
remainder of the patients had recovered, 
and the more bracing atmosphere had 
quickly restored them to a condition of 
vigorous health. 


277 


278 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

All the sailors, even those of them who 
had neither mother, wife nor sweetheart, 
and for whose coming there was no one on 
the lookout, were wild with joyous excite- 
ment to be at home once more. When the 
anchor was over the bow and everything 
made snug alow and aloft, there was not 
much of an attempt made to enforce dis- 
cipline, and things on board were at sixes 
and sevens. The officers, too, were only 
human beings, and, like the men, their 
thoughts were elsewhere; knowing that 
Avhat had been a long and daDgerous service 
was now virtually ended, they winked at 
the prevailing want of order. They had 
no more than entered the port than disag- 
gregation commenced ; it was the begin- 
ning of the end ; the ship was going out 
of commission, involving the dispersal of 
all those men and inanimate objects that 
for more than two years had been facing 
danger in distant seas, bound together by 
ties so close, having one common name, 
governed by one spirit of amour p7^opre, 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 279 

forming one body ruled, it may almost be 
said, by a single soul. 

The view Avas a pleasant one upon the 
whole that greeted their eyes on that spring 
day, in that French roadstead, after their 
long absence, although there was menace 
of wind and rain in the dark clouds that 
hung loAV in the humid atmosphere, pro- 
pelled by fitful gusts of air. 

The health officer had been sent for, 
whose authorization they must have before 
they could communicate with the outer 
world, with their new-recovered France. 
And a few boats came up and hung around 
the Sadne, such unwieldy and clumsily 
constructed affairs as pervade the waters 
of Brest, heavily sparred to meet the per- 
petual bad Aveather that prevails in those 
stormy regions, Avith sails of coarse brown 
canvas, and all of them displaying scars 
that they had received in battle Avith their 
enemy, the north Avester. The spectacle 
certainly lacked the cheerful gayety of the 
Mediterranean ports, Jean’s native country. 


280 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOE 


where hundreds of small, frail barks, 
bedizened with flags and painted in bright 
colors, filled with laughing, chattering men 
and women, come dancing over the tranquil 
water to carry by storm the home-arriving 
vessel. 

In these boats, which were made to pre- 
serve a respectful distance pending the 
arrival of the health officer, were women 
with all sorts of wares and merchan- 
dise for sale, laundresses, boarding-house 
keepers, little sewing-girls, all bent on 
relieving poor Jack of a portion of his 
hard-earned wages ; and occasionally, also, 
a mother, a sister, or a young person who 
simply styled herself an ‘^acquaintance,” 
would call on some particular sailor by 
name and, when he presented himself at 
one of the gun-ports, would greet him 
cordially while waiting for permission to 
go on board and give him a warmer saluta- 
tion. 

Those of the crew who were so unfor- 
tunate as to have no acquaintances among 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 281 

the female portion of Brest’s population 
did not allow that fact to deter them from 
using their eyes, but resting their elbows 
on the hammock nettings, with faces 
expressive of contentment at once more 
beholding civilized women’s faces, ex- 
changed profound reflections on the fashion 
of the ladies’ attire, especially commending 
a certain little corsage that had been 
introduced during their absence. 

By way of killing time the little group 
of friends that was so soon to be dissolved 
forever, embracing among its numbers 
Joal, Marec and Kerboulhis, was collected 
on the forecastle, looking, laughing, and 
talking of whatever came in their heads. 

, But all at once Pierre Joal, with a face 
as blanched as if he had seen a ghost, 
darted back, pulling the others after him by 
the arm : “ Jean’s mother ! ! ! ” And the 
five men, like frightened children, first 
stooped to hide behind the nettings, then, 
bent almost double, retreated to the centre 
of the deck where they could not be seen. 


282 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

Jean’s mother ! yes, it was she, who had 
come forth from her home and was there, 
close at the ship’s side, with eager, ques- 
tioning eyes dilated wide, half from joy, 
half from alarmed impatience. Among all 
those smiling young faces that lined the 
nettings of the 8a6ne she had sought her 
boy, and had not found him, had not 
found him yet. 

For months she had been looking for- 
ward to her son’s return, dreaming of it by 
night, planning and preparing for it by 
day; she had done her best to beautify 
their humble little home, to which they 
both, however, because they had lived 
there together some little space of time^ 
were beginning to feel attached, inasmuch 
as it was beyond them to secure a better 
one. To his chamber in particular she had 
devoted all her loving care. By dint of 
economy, patient toil, and her inherent 
ingenuity and good taste, she had effected 
her embellishments without trenching on 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 283 

her little capital, which she had placed out 
at interest. And that morning, when the 
old watchman, whom she had engaged for 
the service several days before, came and 
notified her that the Saone was signaled 
and would anchor in the roadstead in two 
hours’ time, she made haste to put every- 
thing in order about the apartment, went 
out and purchased flowers for the vases, 
and hired a woman to come in and cook 
and serve the evening meal. Her attire, 
too, had been a subject of deep thought 
and anxiety to her ; as he had it so at heart 
that she should always be a lady in exter- 
nals, in ordering her new hat she had given 
directions that it should have a feather in 
it — a vanity that she had not indulged 
herself with for the last five years — a gray 
feather, of a shade she felt sure would 
please him. But when she came to dress 
preparatory to going down to the harbor, 
she hesitated long, owing to the unsettled 
condition of the weathei‘, whether or not 
she should wear that fine new hat that she 


284 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

Lad boiigLt to do honor to their Sunday 
evening walks. She made up her mind to 
put it on, however, for the greater glory of 
that son who liked to see hei* present a 
brave appearance before the other sailors 
and the officers of the ship. 

When, as they left the town behind them, 
the boatman to whom she had entrusted 
herself pointed to a ship in the distance 
that had barely got her ancher dowii, and 
said : There she is, your Saone ! ” a sud- 
den fit of trembling came over her, with a 
slight sensation of dizziness. 

How would he look, what appearance 
would her J ean present after his long ab- 
sence? She felt that her mind would not 
be at rest until her eyes had reassured her 
on that score. She thought of the dysen- 
tery and the fevers so prevalent in Cochin 
China, some slight attacks of which he had 
confessed to havdng experienced. And 
suddenly the matter appeared to her in a 
graver light than it had done before ; she 
recalled to mind those young men whose 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 285 

return she had witnessed, so ghastly pale, 
their constitution gone, who slowly wasted 
away in spite of their mothers’ care. And 
as the Saone drew nearer and her tall bul- 
warks towered high and ever higher above 
the short, tumbling sea of the open road- 
stead, she thought how soon she was now 
to know the best or worst, and felt her 
heart assailed by alternating emotions of 
joy and dread, each more poignant than the 
other; but it was joy that predominated, 
with an eager, trembling impatience to 
clasp him in her arms and give him a 
mother’s kiss. 

Again she scanned the long row of faces 
that rose above the bulwarks and stretched 
without break or interruption from fore- 
castle to quarterdeck. Her boy, why was 
lie not there upon the deck, with all the 
others ? Her heart sank and a sensation 
of icy dread came over her incontinent 
merely because she had not seen him yet — 
and still there was nothing strange in that, 
as she strove to make herself understand. 


286 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

since lie might be on duty in the between- 
decks. Her fears mastered her judgment ; 
she lost her bead for a moment and di- 
rected lier boatman to run bis craft in 
closer, heedless of the warning gestures of 
the sentry at the gangway, a rough untu- 
tored lad of Brittany, who held his musket 
tight clutched in one hand and with the 
other signaled them, Keep off, keep off ! 
You can’t come on board; it is not per- 
mitted yet ! ” 

On board the ship Jean’s five friends, who 
had gathered about the foot of the main- 
mast, held a consultation in whispered, 
frightened tones. What was to be done ? 
Notify the officer of the deck, opined 
Marec. M. Tanguy was on duty, a good 
fellow and a gentleman, who would come 
and break the news to her gently. 

^^Ah, poor lady!” Pierre Joal replied, 
“ he may break it gently or abruptly, it’s 
all one, with what there is to tell her.” 

Merciful Heavens ! and there was the 
health boat coming alongside, almost on 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 287 

board of them. It would not be possible 
to keep the poor mother off longer, she 
must be allowed to come on board with the 
others; nay, she must be nearest of them 
all, holding on by the rungs of the side- 
ladder, doubtless, in spite of orders to the 
contrary, for even now they could hear her 
voice demanding of the sentry in altered, 
palpitating tones, where was Jean Berny ? 
And the young man, unversed in the world’s 
ways, but who had nevertheless known 
from the beginning that it was his com- 
rade’s mother, remained like a fixture at 
the gangway, where his appointed station 
was, his face of a bright scarlet up to the 
very roots of his hair, feigning not to under- 
stand the question that came to him from 
below, turning his head and casting beseecli- 
ing looks on thos6 who had been the dead 
man’s friends, as if appealing to them to 
come to his assistance, and quickly. 

Jean Berny — ^you know whom I mean — 
Jean Berny, the quartermaster?” the 
poor, supplicating voice went on, now 


288 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

almost inaudible in its anguish and dis- 
tress. 

Then Pierre, in his alarm at the immi- 
nent prospect of her boarding the ship, 
suddenly resolved upon a course that would 
bring matters to a crisis. Taking from his 
pocket the little book in which he kept the 
roll of his boat’s crew, he wrote Avith a 
pencil in large, unsteady characters : J ean 
Berny died at sea, a month ago,” tore out 
the leaf, folded it once across, and ran and 
gave it to the sentry : “ Give her that, my 

boy, give her that, quick !” and thereon fled 
to the depths of the ship, Avith a great 
dread on him, as if he had struck her Avith 
a knife, and folloAved by the other four, 
who no more than he could endure to hear 
that mother’s cry of anguish. 

When they returned to the deck a few 
minutes later a cold, penetrating rain was 
falling and the wind Avas blowing. All 
the small boats, Avithout exception, had 
either left or Avere making ready to leaA^e, 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 289 

their skippers terrified by the squall that 
had come up so quickly and had such an 
ugly look about it. 

With timid, hesitating steps they 
approached the gangway to see what had 
become of the boat that contained Jean 
Berny’s mother — and they recognized it 
without difiiculty, ten yards away on the 
ship’s quarter, just finishing getting up its 
sail ; in the stern sheets, on the fiooring, 
was a human form that one of the boat- 
men was holding in restraint, because it 
struggled as if with an intention of casting 
itself overboard. A piece of coarse sail- 
cloth had been spread over it, as if it had 
been a corpse, but the protecting canvas 
was insufficient to conceal a woman’s be- 
drabbled, rain-soaked hat, with a gray 
feather pitifully sweeping the muddy 
planks, and a hand, from which the glove 
had been partially removed, whose fingers 
were stained with blood. The little Breton 
sentry, whose face was pale enough now, 
with a great tear trickling down each 


290 JEAN BERN T, SAILOR 

cheek, said to them in explanation ; It 
was this way, you see ; ske made a grab 
for the ladder, thinking to climb on board, 
and the iron bar stripped lier finger-nails 
clean off.” 

^^My God, my God ! ” said Pierre Joal, in 
deep, low- toned accents, “ my Lord and 
God ! but that was a sorrowful sight to 
see, though ! ” He did not long continue 
to see the sight, however, for a mist came 
before his eyes ; he thought of his own 
mother, and his fortitude abandoned him 
entirely ; he gave a great gulp and choked 
back a rising sob, and the tears streamed 
down his face, mingling with the driving 
rain that was inundating everything. 


LIII 

She was in her own home, whither she 
had been conducted or carried by someone 
unknown to her and laid upon her bed, on 
whicli she bad remained stretched, for how 
many hours she could not have told; wear- 
ing still her pretty new dress, now ruined 
by rain and bilgewater, and on her feet 
her muddy shoes, that had soiled the 
immaculate white countei^ane. On her 
wounded hand was a rude dressing that 
someone had placed there, but she had dis- 
arranged it amid the writhings and con- 
vulsive movements of her arms and the 
red drops were oozing forth again. 

All through the night she had had spells 
of heavy stupor, illuminated from within 
by fitful, incoherent flashes of conscious- 
ness, in which images of her dead boy were 


291 


292 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

ever present, and each time that she aroused 
from one of those somnolent spells her 
awaking was more heart breaking in its 
lucidity, as soon as a few brief seconds had 
served to banish the illusion that she had 
been dreaming. The hideous reality, on 
the contrary, ever continued to assert itself 
more and more distinctly. In her poor head, 
that was gradually shaking off the effect 
produced by the first benumbing blow, the 
horrible thing w^as establishing itself as a 
fact, ever assuming more substantial pro- 
portions, that she was to carry with her as 

long as life endured 

When she awoke this time and opened 
her eyes after a longer period of somnolency 
it was daylight. The bright morning sun- 
shine w^as streaming into the room, impas- 
sive as if life had known no change since 
yesterday. It must be moiming, the begin- 
ning of another fugitive day, it mattered 
not what, a day of sjDring like all the rest. 
She awoke with the indifference of a woman 
dead, for time and for eternity — and for all 


JEAN BEENT, SAILOE 293 

things beside. AVith the horrible impres- 
sion of irremediable, annihilating disaster, 
that was slow to define itself clearly, how- 
ever, in the tardily progressive return of 
her dazed and wearied consciousness, she 
looked on surrounding objects and beheld 
them as from the bottom of a pit, as if she 
were already laid in her grave. She had 
ceased to delude herself with the hope that 
it was all a fantastic, evil dream that would 
pass away; no, the knowledge of the re- 
ality of her remediless loss was now im- 
pressed indelibly on her mind. Before 
proceeding further to collect her thoughts, 
she took note, always with the most per- 
fect indifference and unconcern, of the 
disorder that reigned among the few poor 
objects that until now had been guarded 
with such jealous care. Her bed defiled by 
the mud off her shoes; the hat with the 
gray feather, which looked as though it had 
been dragged through the gutter, thrown 
negligently on a chair ; and on the mantel- 
shelf the most fondly cherished of her 


294 jean BEBNT, SAILOR 

vases, wliicli she had brought from their 
old Provencal home, overturned and broken, 
its flowers scattered on the floor. Then her 
glance fell on two women who Avere sitting 
at her bedside — two women of the neigh- 
borhood who had taken turns during the 
night to Avatch and restrain her from doing 
violence on herself — and at last the atro- 
cious thing burst on her memory Avith more 
implacable distinctness : Ah, her boy ! 
her boy, her Jean ! And raising herself 
Avith a violent start to a sitting posture on 
the bed, as if some spring Avithin her had 
suddenly given Avay, rending and lacerating 
her being, she gave utterance to a succession 
of appalling shrieks, tearing her forehead 
Avith what nails Avere left to her, compress- 
ing her head Avith both her hands as if she 
would crush out the horrible anguish that 
Avas Avithin. And Avbile 'she relieA^ed her 
soul of its burden of misery by that long 
wailing cry that it froze the blood to hear, 
the two Avatchers, Avomen of the people, 
sat by and looked at each other silently. 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 295 

through eyes dim with tears, for they, too, 
wore mothers, and an innate sentiment of 
delicacy restrained them from intruding on 
her sorrow with unavailing words. 

But presently, seized by one of those 
imperious impulses that often visit those 
in torment, impulses that prompt to fly, to 
cast one’s self from lofty places, to beat 
one’s head against stone walls, she leaped 
quickly from her bed, holding with trem- 
bling fingers by the white curtains; then 
the two women also rose, apprehensive of 
what she might attempt to do. Her face, 
seen by the broad light of day, had 
changed and was grown ten years older, 
ravaged and wasted in a single night by 
all the fatigue of her life of humble toil, of 
unfruitful struggle, of vain waiting. Her 
eyes had in them an ugly and hateful 
expression that was new to them and that 
suffering had doubtless summoned from 
the dark recesses of her soul, and in addi- 
tion to all that, what with her soiled dress, 
her disordered hair and the sullen droop 


296 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

of the lip, she looked like a woman of the 
people, she had the air of one of those 
poor creatures who have succumbed to 
poverty, an air that would have pained 
her Jean more than all, had he been there 
to see. 

To make an end of it, that seemed the 
sole thing possible left her to do — throw 
open a window, hurl herself out, and end 
the chapter of her life on the cold hard 
stones below ! But even the thought of 
death brought no sense of satisfaction to 
her distracted brain ; it would be inade- 
quate, would settle nothing to her liking. 
In the first place her despair, in revolt 
against the cruel, unseeing God who had 
done that thing — in revolt, too, against man- 
kind and against all — felt the need of 
remaining yet a while on earth, to protest 
and curse her fate. Again, to leave the 
world like that, a poor, self-slain old 
woman, whose remains men would come 
and carry off with sensations of loathing 
and disgust, would be a slur cast on her 


JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 297 

son, would be wanting in the respect due 
to bis memory. Moreover, she being dead, 
there would be no living creature upon 
earth to cherish his remembrance ; the 
adored image that she carried in her heart, 
the only image of him that subsisted, 
would be destroyed, he would be the 
more quickly buried in the depths of the 
dark void — and these considerations, acting 
on her mind in a confused, ill-defined way, 
served to restrain her. And yet, what 
was she to do ? Where was she to look to 
find the courage that should enable her to 
live on without him in a long and hopeless 
future ? 

She dragged herself wearily up and 
down the chamber, casting herself down in 
corners and resting her head against the 
wall. 

As she passed the table she unintention- 
ally swept off some of the small objects on 
it and broke them, and when one of the 
women who had been there over night 
interfered and begged her to ‘^be more 


298 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

reasonable,” sbe returned, and with a 
soul-liarrowing gesture, broke wLat re- 
mained — those things that she prized most, 
and that she had preserved for years and 
years with religious care. She felt an 
unreasoning irritation against that woman, 
who had no business there and insisted 
that she should take heed to trifles like 
those at such a moment, and was inclined 
to let her know that she cared not for her, 
or for her preaching, or for anything in the 
wide world ; that all was void, that nothing 
existed longer — now that her Jean was 
dead. 

She shed no tears ; it was nearly twenty - 
four hours since the horrible little piece of 
white paper had been handed her by that 
sailor on the Saone^ and she had not shed 
a tear. Her features wore an indescrib- 
able expression of fixity that was almost 
sternness, her nose was pinched and thin, a 
strongly marked vertical furrow occupied 
the middle of her forehead and extended 
to the eyes. Her lips and tongue were 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 299 

hot and dry ; she had a sensation as if her 
brain had been removed and replaced by 
a heavy mass of iron, and her temples 
seemed to be hooped with a tight-con- 
stricted band, likewise of iron. 

She had moments of comatose uncon- 
sciousness, somewhat like the somnolent 
spells of the previous horror-fraught night ; 
then would come the terrible awakening, 
with its irresistible impulse to beat herself 
about the head and shriek with agony, to 
disburden herself of those long, hoarse 
groans that comfort a little while they 
last. 

Thus passed all the morning and almost 
all the day. She put oif the moment of 
dying, principally because she was watched, 
and she found the presence of those women 
irksome, who persisted so obstinately in 
remaining there. In her more lucid 
moments her despair continually gained 
greater strength and depth, penetrating her 
with its mortal chill to the very marrow of 
her bones ; each time she evoked a fresh 


300 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

memory of Jean, each time one of their 
plans, now dashed to the ground and 
mined hopelessly, came to her mind, she 
felt the grasp of the inexorable hand upon 
her, tighter, more relentless 

What had her boy done to God, he, her 
son, her Jean, her handsome Jean, her idol, 
her sole treasure upon earth ! Never an 
instant’s happiness for him ! Why had 
childhood and youth been so harsh and 
unkind to him? Denied and cast off, or 
nearly so, by his relatives down yonder, 
because he had the misfortune to be 
poor ; then abandoned and forgotten by that 
Madeleine, by all the world! And now, 
to end all, this miserable death, far from 
his mother — and they had cast him into 
the sea, like refuse ! 

Her thoughts reverted constantly to the 
window that she must open, to the cruel 
flagstones below that were Avaiting to 
receive her body, but each time respect for 
the memory of her dead boy restrained her 
from carrying out her purpose — and also an- 


JEAN BEUNY, SAILOR 301 

other and more trivial consideration that had 
of late presented itself to her. She called to 
mind her Jean’s attachment for certain small 
objects of his own, brought from Provence, 
that he had intrusted to her care, and for 
other articles of use or ornament in their 
humble home that were owned by them in 
common. She thought regretfully of those 
she had broken but now. As for the others, 
into what hands would they fall when she 
should be no more, what profaning touch 
awaited them ? That was a matter that 
demanded her attention ; she would wait 
for the morrow to give her clearer ideas on 
the subject. And while thinking of those 
poor, paltry little things, it seemed to her 
a moment as if that mass of iron in her 
head were softening, were on the point of 
melting, and that the tension of her feelings 
was about to relax ; but no, her eyes 
remained dry, her bosom w^as unshaken by 
a sob; her grief was not yet ripe for 
tears. 

A sudden desire came over her to look 


302 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 

again on the pictures of her boy, all the 
pictures, taken at dilferent ages, that she 
had kept together in one collection. She 
had scarcely given them a thought for the 
past two months, engrossed as she was with 
anticipations of their coming meeting, 
when her eyes were to feast on a Jean who 
would doubtless be quite unlike him of 
other days, a full-grown man, handsome as 
the day, a Jean of twenty-four. She ran to 
her closet to get the portraits, tossing the 
objects on the shelves this way and that in 
her impatient haste. Among them was 
one that she loved above all the rest, de- 
picting him as a sailor, with his bright 
boyish smile upon his face ; this photograph 
was informed with that visible but myster- 
iously inexplicable something which pro- 
ceeds from the soul, and that men call 
expression; a last reflection of his soul that 
now was wandering in the great realm of 
night and darkness lingered in that small 
image, upon which the mother’s gaze was 
bent. And as she gazed, as if avaricious 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 303 

of her suffering and unwilling to spare her- 
self a single pang, as she held it to her 
eyes and looked at it more closely, she saw 
that the paper, now yellow with age, 
was dotted with minute white specks, the 
effect of the humid atmosphere of Brest. 
So, she was not to be allowed even to keep 
his picture ; that, too, was to be taken from 
her, like all the rest ! 

Oh, and the little hat ! ” She felt an 
uncontrollable, frantic impulse that bade 
her look on it again, and touch it, at once, 
without delay. Approaching the window, 
where the light was stronger, she opened 
with feverish haste the old green bandbox, 
removed the protecting gauze that en- 
wrapped the precious relic, and there, faded 
and antiquated, it lay in the pale sunshine 
of the northeim spring, the little hat ” 
that had been first assumed, down there in 
bright, warm Provence, to do honor to that 
luminous Easter festival, now buried in 
the past with the other swift vanished 
years. To Jean it had been a symbol of 


304 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 

all that was best and brightest in his happy, 
petted childhood ; it had served to remind 
him of the handsome clothes he was given 
to wear on Sundays in the past, and of all 
the luxury of other days in his Provencal 
home — a very modest luxury, it is true, 
but that the poor child, when he was be- 
come a sailor, took pleasure in magnifying 
in recollection. And the gracious, curly 
head that once had worn that little hat, with 
its ribbon of brown velvet, having developed 
raj)idly into a virile head, had been granted 
barely sufficient time to dream a few 
dreams that were never to be realized, to 
experience the delicious trouble of love, 
and now, the sport and plaything of the 
billows in the obscure depths of ocean, it 
was but a nameless nothing, of less account, 
more neglected and forgotten in the great 
scheme of infinity than the least of the 

pebbles on the shore 

The mother turned it over and over in 
her nerveless, trembling hands, and never 
had the “little hat” appeared to her so 


JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 305 

antiquated and old-fashioned as to-day, 
such a sorry little object, so like a relic of 
a dead child. She even detected a spot 
where moths had eaten the velvet, and 
here and there were patches of white 
mold : the beginning of the labor of the 
infinitely small creatures that iii the end 
are appointed to triumph over all, and that 
commence by destroying those objects on 
which we have been so childish as to place 
our affections. 

What was she to do now with the little 
hat” that her Jean had so often recom- 
mended to her care ? To think that, when 
she was gone, there would be no one in all 
the world, no living soul who had loved 
her boy a little, to whom she could leave 
this souvenir of him. What, then, was she 
to do? destroy it with her own hands, 
commit it to the flames ? She had not the 
courage. Oh, mon Dieu ! what was she to 
do with it ? And the existence of the little 
brown felt head-covering brought to her 
distracted brain an additional and more 


306 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 

horrible complication. It was an obstacle 
that kept her from dying ; and yet, even 
supposing that she were to condemn her- 
self, a poor, forlorn old woman, to drag out 
a lingering, lonely life in guarding with 
useless obstinacy the trifles that had been 
his — wha^ then ? There must come an end 
sometime, and the fate of the loved objects 
would only be the worse; the dear gar- 
ments profaned by the touch of strange, 
mercenary hands, sold to the old-clothes- 
man and the second-hand dealer 

Oh, the pitiful thought, the “ little hat,” 
the dear little hat of that long- vanished 
happy Eastertide, being carried away 
among filthy rags and refuse in the basket 
of a rag-picker ! She pictured the thing 
in her mind’s eye, and at the suggestion it 
seemed to her that there was a general 
breaking up of everything within her; this 
time the mass of iron that had so oppressed 
her did actually melt and dissolve away, in 
her head, in her heart, everywhere through- 
out her being. Her bosom, shaken at first 


JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 307 

by a few convulsive movements, presently 
began to labor with a quicker and more 
interrupted motion than in ordinary breath- 
ing, and finally she sank into a chair, 
bowed her head upon the table, and with 
thick-coming sobs wept the first scalding 
tears of the childless mother. 

But it was only a physical crisis, the 
equilibrium of life reasserting itself, one of 
those reactions of the overtaxed nervous 
system that are generally brought about 
by the veriest trifles, and that afford a little 
temporary relief to the afilicted one by 
substituting one ill for another. 

True peace of mind it seemed as if she 
was never to look for more, never in this 
life. She was like one condemned to tor- 
ture, whose punishment consists in remain- 
ing bound to a stake or to a cross until 
death comes to his release, and who has 
not even the distraction of bodily pain to 
dull his thoughts while waiting for the last 
stern agony. Heavy gates of lead had 
closed before her, shutting out life, as 


308 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOB 

impenetrable and immovable as the gates 
of hell. Alone, alone in the world, a child- 
less, hopeless, prayerless old woman, who 
would some day soon be taken up from the 
beach, drowned, or from the pavement, a 
blood-stained corpse 


LIV 

But about twilight of that second day, 
as she sat there on her chair, from which 
she had not stirred, her eyes dry once more, 
her temples throbbing with fever, her dis- 
tracted mind incapable of thought — as she 
sat there, her roving gaze rested on the 
wall in front of her, where were two 
images : the Virgin, white in her white 
veils, with the date of Jean’s first com- 
munion inscribed below, and a crucifix, 
Christ’s head bowed upon the cross. The 
women who had watched, seeing her more 
calm, had left her, and she was alone — as 
it was appointed she should be from now 
on till death. 

In the deepening shadows a few rays of 
the dying daylight, at once an illumination 
and an appeal, lingered on the two sacred 
images. And as she gazed on them with 
309 


310 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

her poor haggard eyes, a great wave of 
tenderness swept o’er her, that this time, 
however, came from the deepest recesses of 
her soul ; a feeling of deep peace gradually 
filled all her being, and tears came to her 
eyes again, but less salt and bitter than 
they had been before. Her great revolt 
was ended ; acting in obedience to a 
sudden impulse, she rose and swiftly 
crossed the room, and cast herself upon her 
knees before the images, with face upraised 
toward them — and there all her being was 
dissolved in a sweet ecstasy yet more pro- 
found, that caused her tears to flow as from 
an abundant spring. The celestial prom- 
ised land appeared to the bereaved 
mother, with all the pledges and all the 
radiant allurement of Christian immortality, 
as it is understood by those of simple faith 
and as it must be to afford them comfort 
and consolation : her Jean, her well-be- 
loved and she would meet again up there 
above; her Jean, unchanged, in human 
shape and still a child, still wearing his 


JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 311 

bright boyish smile of earth, who would 
remember their old home in Provence, 
would remember the ^Hittle hat” and the 
joyous Easter Sundays of the vanished past. 

Yes, all was peace once more, and her 
rebellious feelings were quieted, as fever 
is subdued by the a]3plication of cooling 
lotions. Between those two souls, the sou’s 
and mother’s, each issue of the othei*, some 
mysterious link that had snapped had 
been re-connected, and this tie served to 
give to the soul that remained on earth the 
illusion of the enduring existence of the 
soul that had departed. 

In her present mood of resignation she 
could see how it might be possible for her 
to take up the broken thread of her life 
and spend the remainder of her days in 
solitude, with her son looking down on her 
from his remote abode ; she had a vision of 
her little home, once more made neat and 
orderly, which she would never leave, and 
of her mourning garments, that she would 
cause to be fashioned becomingly, of 


312 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 

decent stuff and shape, for his sake, from 
respect to his memory, because he had 
always wished to see her attired as a lady. 
And she spoke between her sobs, saying, 
^^Yes, Lord, I will submit to thy will. 
Yes, Lord, I will live on, I will work, I will 
do my best — until the time comes when 
thou shall see fit to take me to thyself.” 

O Christ of those who weep, O Virgin 
immaculate and calm, O all ye adorable 
myths and legends that nothing can replace, 
that alone sustain the childless mother 
and the motherless child and give them 
strength and courage to live on, that make 
our tears less bitter and bring us hope and 
cheer in the last dark hour, blessings rest 
on ye ! 

And we, whom ye have abandoned for 
evermore, let us bow our faces in the dust 
and kiss with tears the traces of your 
retreating footsteps. 

THE END. 


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